Sun Showers
by ElsBells
Summary: AU. Quinn Fabray, of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, is shipped to Morocco for the Allied invasion of North Africa. A calamitous beach landing brings her to Navy flight nurse Rachel Berry. Raise their happy eyes up to flaming skies. Faberry in WWII.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I have a small obsession with WWII, but by no means am I an expert. If I get anything horribly, awfully wrong, feel free to let me know! I've worked a few details around to make this story work for Faberry. Also, Memorial Day, remember the fallen and their families. It seemed appropriate to post this today.

**Sun Showers: Chapter 1**

If Quinn focused hard enough, and shut her eyes tight enough, and pressed her hands over her ears because everything was just _so loud_, she could pretend the beach she was sitting on was home. The sand looked the same, where it wasn't streaked with blood, and the sound of the waves was comfortingly familiar.

Quinn _never_ thought she'd want to go home, mostly because she wasn't sure where home was. Maybe all the beaches of the west coast? San Onofre? Del Mar? She'd drifted down to Baja once, which had been nice. It had been quiet, at least, and Quinn liked that.

She shook her head and gave herself ten more seconds of sitting in the sand. And then she said a short prayer for a family who no longer cared for her, kissed the faded cross around her neck, and opened her eyes.

All the sound came rushing back at once.

"Fabray!" Somebody was calling her name. "_Fabray_!"

Quinn grabbed her gun and whirled around, staying crouched behind the sandbags and shuffling over to make room for the woman who dropped next to her and knocked roughly into her side.

"They were expecting the second wave!" Santana yelled in her ear. Quinn could still barely hear her over the artillery bombardment, but she thought what Santana was saying was pretty obvious. She twisted around to glance back at the shore. Quinn could see the _Texas_ and the _Savannah_ in the distance, and then the twelve troopships and destroyers up closer to land.

The nine thousand troops of the 60th Infantry Regiment were still pouring onto the beach. Sixty-five tanks would soon join them with the goal of securing the airfield over the hill.

Quinn was glad she was on land. She could hear the guns of the _Jean Bart_ clearly. Somebody was obviously having problems subduing it.

"We're getting air support, but we need to keep pushing!" Santana shouted, steadying herself with a hand in the sand. "Disregard the water contingent and focus on _land_. They've got snipers all up the ridge and we're open targets."

Quinn nodded. She just kept nodding. Move forward. Keep on moving. It was all the same. Just _don't stop._

She spat because there was sand in her mouth which she just couldn't seem to get rid of. She pushed her hair back under her helmet and clapped a hand roughly to the pack on Santana's back.

"They have four 190s and four 130s up along the cliff, and then mortars coming from somewhere beyond that." Quinn informed loudly, eyes darting around, and then ducking at an explosion to her left. Her heart seized up, but the smoke and sand cleared and nobody had been hit. "I'll-I'll go first. We're moving east for more cover."

Santana nodded, wiping the sand from her face and the sweat from her eyes. Quinn tilted forward so that her helmet leaned against the sandbags and screamed as loud as she could, in frustration or anger or adrenaline she didn't know.

And then she gripped her gun securely and took off in a controlled run for various points of cover. She spotted her field director crouched next to another pile of sandbags, sending the landing troops to the east. She had blood on her face, but she was yelling as loud as ever.

Everything was just so loud.

"Take cover and wait for air support!" Quinn's director yelled. "French have no infantry! It's all artillery!"

Her eyes were slightly crazed, but her movements were urgent and calculated.

Quinn filed the information in the back of her brain. Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, had only started that morning. Nobody had been expecting French resistance, but Quinn watched an explosion rock the small boats on the shore and knew that it was _definitely_ present at Port Lyautey. She hoped the other landings were going better.

Quinn stumbled in the sand and clutched her rifle tighter. Her legs were burning and she still had sand in her mouth, but she kept on moving. She listened for any sort of intelligible shouts or instruction, but everything was just a garbled mess of noise.

A dotted landscape of green hats and smoke.

She kept spitting. She just could not get the grit off her tongue or her teeth.

And then Quinn ran right into an explosion. Probably a mortar. Sand was blown up into her face and ringing replaced the noise in her ears as she was knocked backwards onto her side. She sat still, elbows in the sand, dazed and wondering if she'd gone deaf.

"Quinn! _Quinn_!" Santana was yelling. It was faint, like a dream.

Quinn looked up with blurry eyes and saw another soldier catch Santana around the waist as she rushed past more sandbags. Quinn frowned.

_God_, there was so much sand in her mouth. It never went away. But she was glad for the quiet, and she told herself to stand up. She was on one knee when another explosion hit. Right next to her. And her eyes rolled up to the beautiful blue morning sky before everything went dark and quiet, and it was like she was lying on the beach at San Onofre and listening to the waves.

It was peaceful. Quinn liked this place.

~ooooooooooooooo~

Rachel was used to the noise by now. The never-ending rumbles in the distance and the shouting and the perpetual state of anxiety. Sometimes they reminded her of New York. Crowded city streets and loud bars and jovial exclamations and _music_.

God, the music. Rachel probably missed that the most.

But she was proud of what she was doing. And peoples' lives were more important than Broadway.

The airfield had been secured by the time the flight nurses landed at Port Lyautey, and Rachel could see a crowd at the northeast corner, probably awaiting triage. There were bodies lined along the ground, most of them moving, some completely still, and Rachel swallowed over the twisting in her gut.

She stuck with her two friends, nurses Pierce and Jones, as the boat came ashore. They wore matching navy blue skirts, jackets, and caps, along with similar expressions of reproach and anxiety.

What awaited them this time?

They'd been sent down from Fedala, where the sea battle was still raging. The _L'Alycon_ was the only French destroyer still operational, but submarines still stalked the fleet.

The nurses moved to help the most severely injured soldiers and to assess the damage before their temporary canvas shelter was even constructed. The sun was dropping in the sky and Rachel hurriedly wound her way through the crowds with the rest of the first-aid team.

It was definitely not the worst she'd seen. But that wasn't saying much.

Rachel tried to ignore the cries for help and the painful moaning to listen to Nurse Pillsbury.

"Pierce, go with Jones. They've got a man who's losing his leg at the end of the line." The head nurse instructed. She stood on top of a slight dune on the beach and waved her hands in the direction she was referencing. "Rogers, take your team down there as well. Berry-, "

Rachel straightened up when her name was called. She smoothed her skirt and made sure her sleeves were rolled up so they wouldn't get in her way.

"There's a woman inside; you need to check her out and stitch her up." Nurse Pillsbury pointed towards the canvas shelter and Rachel started moving before she'd finished speaking. "It looks like it's _mostly_ surface injuries, but her arm may need to come off."

Rachel grimaced. She didn't know if she'd be able to do that.

She grabbed her kit and rushed over to the edge of the tent, pausing just outside to breathe in the cool sea breeze for a moment. It would do no good to vomit all over herself right now.

Rachel moved into the half of the tent that was fully constructed and strode down a line of beds swarming with nurses and various military personnel. They were mostly men. Rachel hummed to herself and offered a small smile to everybody who made eye contact with her.

And then she came across a woman in one of the beds with some kind of _awful _injury to her arm. And her face. Maybe the whole left side of her body.

Rachel could barely tell where the wounds were. She observed for a minute, not wanting to dive straight in and further harm the woman. The label next to her bed said "WAAC, third officer Quinn Fabray."

She was blonde, as far as Rachel could tell, with shaggy hair and sand around her lips. She wore pants instead of the standard issue Women's Army skirt, and Rachel wondered how she'd pulled that off. Her jacket was nowhere to be seen, her white sleeves were rolled up, and the tie around her neck was loose and ripped.

And every bit of her clothing on the left side of her body was soaked in blood. Half her face was bright red and raw, and Rachel sort of wanted to cry.

Quinn Fabray looked so small. Rachel wondered how she'd ended up here.

"Okay, honey." She whispered, mostly to herself as she moved up to Quinn's head. She brushed the sand off of the woman's face and away from her mouth. "It'll be okay."

She worked quickly, untying Quinn's tie and unbuttoning her shirt, missing the curtains that sometimes surrounded the beds. But they hadn't had time to set those up yet. Rachel pulled out her scissors so that she wouldn't have to move Quinn's arm around, and she cut both sleeves of the shirt and dropped the bloodied clothing in a heap on the floor.

The soft, pale skin of Quinn's abdomen was marred with bruises and blood. Sand clung to every wet surface, and Rachel tried to wipe a bit of it away to see where all the blood was coming from.

Quinn's shoulder was a mess. So was her face, but that wasn't bleeding as profusely.

Rachel dunked her cloth in the hot soap bucket and then wrung it out over Quinn's shoulder. The water droplets left trails through the blood as they ran down her arm. Rachel did the same thing with alcohol next, glad that Quinn wasn't conscious to experience this. She found a massive gash running from Quinn's shoulder, down her collar, and around her side.

The rest of her shoulder was raw, like the left side of her face. As if the top layer of skin had been burned away. Rachel draped a cool alcohol cloth over Quinn's cheek while she worked on her arm.

She kept talking the whole time, figuring that if there was the slightest chance that Quinn could hear, she'd be absolutely terrified.

"You…must be very brave, Quinn Fabray." Rachel murmured slowly, quietly. She pulled out her needle to stitch Quinn's shoulder back together and ignored the noise around her. It was quieter, but the naval battle still sounded like drums in the distance. "To be out there, to be fighting…You're very pretty. I don't know what you're doing here, but you'll be okay. I promise."

Rachel paused her stitching to sprinkle sulfa powder in Quinn's wounds. She brushed the blonde hair back off Quinn's head and admired the sharp set of the woman's jaw. She really was beautiful.

"I'm sure somebody's missing you." Rachel continued quietly, stitching carefully. "So we'll get you home to them. To your mom. Or maybe you've got a sweetheart?" Rachel shrugged to herself. "You probably do."

Rachel stayed silent for a few minutes to focus on stitching. She brushed the sweat out of her eyes and wished that the breeze could reach them inside of the tent.

"Do we need to take it off?" Nurse Pillsbury called from a few beds away, bandaging a man's leg. She gestured at Quinn's arm. Her voice was a little shaky, obviously nervous that Rachel may say yes.

"No. No, definitely not." Rachel assured, shielding Quinn's body from the attention that the nurse had called to it. "We'll just have to watch for infection. And then…scarring is a given."

It was a shame.

Nurse Pillsbury nodded and went back to work. She was an immaculate leader, but even her blue Navy cap had slipped sideways during the chaos.

"So, Quinn," Rachel started again when she was finished with the stitches. She began laying alcohol cloths over the rest of the raw skin, occasionally sprinkling sulfa powder over everything. "I wonder how you got these pants." She said, almost smiling. Quinn must've stolen them or convinced somebody to trade with her.

Rachel unbuttoned the sandy green trousers and started to pull them down Quinn's strong legs, wincing at the wounds she uncovered. "Did you trick somebody?" she asked in a shaky voice, trying to be positive. "With _your_ face I'm sure all you had to do was ask and they gave you the pants, right?"

Rachel dropped the trousers on top of the white shirt and reached again for the alcohol. "Is there a man walking around in a Women's Army skirt?" she murmured, glancing at Quinn's face like she was expecting an answer. Quinn was breathing more deeply now, which was a good sign. Maybe Rachel was relaxing her.

"Because I'd like to see that." Rachel said with a smile.

She easily bandaged a small gash on Quinn's pale thigh and then draped wet cloths with alcohol on them all the way down her left leg. She wiped the rest of the sand off Quinn's torso and her other leg and out of her mouth, ran a warm cloth through her hair, and administered morphine so that Quinn wouldn't be in too much pain when she woke up.

Rachel was surprised she'd done it all without vomiting. She hadn't been so lucky when she'd first gone overseas.

She settled a light blanket over Quinn because all the woman was wearing was a bra and underwear, and Rachel wasn't comfortable with covering the raw wounds with clothes at the moment. She kissed Quinn's forehead, left the tent to get some air, and ran right into a tussle happening in the sand outside.

"No! I can't let you in there!" Nurse Pierce proclaimed, not unkindly, blocking the way of a female soldier. She had darker skin and hair, and she was still wearing her cap and her jacket, though it was unbuttoned. "It's crowded enough without healthy people wandering around as well."

The soldier's eyes widened and she tried to barge right through the nurse. "Oh no-you-just tell me if she's okay! Just _tell _me!"

"I'm sorry, I can't-"

"Brittany." Rachel interrupted, moving to stand next to the other nurse. "What's-"

"Quinn Fabray." The soldier yelled again. "_Quinn_. _Fabray_. My name is Santana Lopez and I need to know if third officer Quinn Fabray is alive."

Rachel's mouth dropped open a little bit. She pushed Nurse Pierce's shoulder gently and whispered for her to go and tend to the other patients. Santana watched the blonde nurse disappear and then looked expectantly at Rachel, shoulders heaving from exertion.

"She's alive." Rachel assured immediately. "I can't let you in there, but she's alive, and she'll be okay. I promise. She lost a lot of blood, but I stitched her up myself, and she'll have scars, but she'll be _okay_."

Santana's eyes locked onto Rachel's, testing their honesty. She trailed down and eyed Rachel's bloody clothing, grimacing a little bit and clutching her stomach. She seemed to accept Rachel's answer because her shoulders slumped and she sighed heavily in relief.

Rachel held out her hand and smiled hesitantly. "My name's Rachel Berry. I'll take care of your friend."

Santana stared at her, and then nodded shortly before taking her hand. Rachel understood. Random acts of kindness in the middle of the invasion of North Africa were probably rare. Or unappreciated. Rachel thought that a war-torn beach in Morocco was the _best_ place for kindness.

"Thanks." Santana said lowly. Then she straightened up and turned away from Rachel to trudge through the sand towards camp.

Rachel went back into the tent, glad that the noise was dying down and eager to help with whatever she could.

~ooooooooooooooooooooo~

When Quinn awoke, it was to the unmistakable sensation that the left side of her body was being torn apart. She let out a loud cry before dampening it and turning it into a long, low groan of pain.

She didn't know where she was. Her first instinct was to stay quiet.

Rachel sprang out of the small wooden chair she was sitting in next to the bed and hovered over Quinn's head. Quinn's eyes were shut, and she looked about ready to bite through her lip. Rachel didn't hesitate in administering more morphine, and she brushed Quinn's hair back while she waited for the drugs to take effect.

Quinn's muscles gradually relaxed and she finally blinked up at Rachel, glad that there wasn't sand in her mouth anymore. Maybe the nurse had gotten rid of it. Quinn wanted to say something, but needed to take stock of all her limbs first, trying to block out the pain.

"It's not broken." Rachel whispered, putting a gentle hand on Quinn's left upper arm when she saw the haze of confusion on the woman's face. "But there's a pretty bad gash. Sixty stitches. I put it in a sling to keep it immobile."

Quinn blinked. Her face felt like it was _on fire_.

"And…you're burned pretty badly." Rachel continued quietly. "All up your left side. Mostly your arm and your face because they were exposed."

Quinn felt a lump forming in her throat. She gazed into the warm brown eyes of the nurse hovering over her and wished again that she was back home. Those eyes reminded her of home. And the voice. She didn't know why.

Rachel watched Quinn struggle for words and ran a soothing hand through her blonde hair. "My name's Rachel." She whispered, wiping away a tear that dripped out of one of Quinn's hazel eyes. All Rachel could see in them was fear. And longing. "You'll be okay. I promise." She said soothingly.

Quinn tried to reach for Rachel with her left hand, but winced and devolved into a series of low moans with the pain that it caused.

"No, no, no, honey." Rachel murmured, quickly moving around to the other side of the bed. "Here." She took Quinn's right hand and held it softly, rubbing her thumb along the back of it.

Quinn squeezed and swallowed thickly and glanced around. It was dark, except for a few lamps, and all she could see were Rachel's shiny eyes and the white of the cot next to her. "It's…quiet." She observed, voice raw and unsteady.

Rachel smiled slightly. "The beach was secured this afternoon. Not all of Casablanca yet, though. There's an ongoing naval battle, but the ground forces retreated. I believe you'll be staying here until Oran and Algiers are secure as well."

Quinn's eyes were wide and confused.

Rachel stopped talking and squeezed Quinn's hand. She chided herself for spewing too much information. "It _is_ quiet. It's nice." She encouraged gently.

Quinn nodded slowly, and then clenched her jaw because that _hurt_. Rachel brought a cup of water to Quinn's mouth and helped her take a few sips, maneuvering the cup so that Quinn had to move her head as little as possible. She still managed to dribble a bit down her chin.

"My face hurts." Quinn said thickly, eyes closed. "And my…everything."

Rachel's heart clenched. She wished there was something she could do. She watched sympathetically and squeezed Quinn's hand, sitting down in the chair which she'd scooted right up against the edge of the cot and leaning towards Quinn.

"Where did you get those pants?" Rachel asked quietly, trying to get Quinn to focus on something other than the pain. "Is there a man walking around in a skirt wherever you came from?"

Quinn's brows furrowed. It took her a few seconds, but she finally realized what Rachel was talking about, and she glanced down at herself to see that yes, she was mostly naked. She flushed, but it wasn't visible in the darkness. Or against her raw skin.

She probably had bigger things to worry about.

Rachel was pleased when the corner of Quinn's mouth twitched.

"I, um…I came straight from Fort Des Moines." Quinn said, wincing at how hoarse her voice was. She didn't really want to cough or do anything to fix it because she already felt like her face was being ripped off. Or lit on fire. "We came with an infantry regiment, and one of my…friends on the ship gave me his extra pants. My director allowed it. My skirt was ripped, not that I wanted to wear it anyway, and we were going into combat and I said I needed to be practical."

Rachel smiled softly, watching the fear fade slightly from Quinn's eyes. "So you sweet-talked your way into the pants."

Quinn exhaled sharply through her nose and her lip twitched again, but she didn't try to smile. "Shut up." She said without any malice, squeezing Rachel's hand. Her tired gaze lingered on Rachel for a moment. "I'm Quinn." She said, though it came out sort of mumbled.

Rachel just smiled. "Hi, Quinn. It's nice to meet you."

Quinn sighed, gaze dropping to her feet at the end of the bed. "It's not so nice."

Rachel squeezed Quinn's forearm with her free hand. She listened to the waves for a while, letting Quinn rest her voice. She glanced around every few minutes to make sure the patients under her watch were doing alright, because she had a _job_ to do. No matter how much she'd like to sit and talk to Quinn Fabray all night long.

Most were sleeping, glad to have an opportunity to do so.

Quinn's eyes stayed open, a little glazed over. She was in far too much pain to sleep. But it was finally quiet and she enjoyed the warmth of the hand in her own. The rumbles in the distance were like the rocks on the beach at San Onofre. Drumming along with the tide.

"Your friend came by to check on you." Rachel murmured after a while. Quinn's eyes dragged over to her. Tired and pained and still a little fearful. Rachel's shone in the dark.

"Santana?" Rachel told her. "I think that was her name. I promised I'd take care of you. She seems like the kind who would come after me if I didn't."

Quinn breathed deeply in relief. Her friend was alright. She was only one of many, most of whom _wouldn't _be alright, but it was enough for now. Quinn knew when she'd gotten the pants from Puckerman that there was a good chance she'd never see him again.

And then she replayed what Rachel had said and had to bite her tongue to stop herself from smiling and twisting her face up. "Why did you promise you'd take care of me?" she rasped. She didn't really want this woman to go anywhere. Ten minutes and Quinn trusted Rachel with her life.

Rachel bit her lip. She had absolutely no idea why she'd said that, actually. Quinn had just seemed like she needed somebody to look out for her. And Rachel was drawn to her. She didn't take well to the idea of other nurses treating Quinn's wounds, maybe a little less carefully, less kindly than Rachel would.

Most patients were business as usual. Rachel didn't want that for Quinn and her frightened hazel eyes. She didn't know how to explain it.

"We thought your arm would have to come off." Rachel said instead. Quinn stared at her. An eyebrow twitched like she was trying to raise it, but then she went still again. "I-I stitched you up. I have to follow through and make sure my handiwork holds up."

After all, if Quinn's arm fell, off everybody would blame Rachel. She couldn't have that happening.

Quinn hummed, amused. But her hum turned into a groan and she shut her eyes and squeezed Rachel's hand tighter.

Rachel stood up again. "I can't give you more morphine yet, Quinn, I'm so sorry." She apologized quietly, leaning over and brushing Quinn's hair away from her face. "Can I get you anything else?"

Quinn knew she was going to throw up. But she couldn't bring herself to shake her head or move her arm because it _hurt_ so much and that just made the nausea worse. "I'm-I'm gonna-"

She groaned again. Rachel reached behind her for something, but Quinn couldn't stop it anymore and she twisted sideways purely on instinct and threw up over the blanket and the side of the bed. Rachel jumped back, but kept hold of Quinn's hand, and then stepped around the mess to reach Quinn's head.

She pulled Quinn's choppy hair back and tried to hold Quinn's head still while she retched again, singing frantically in her mind to keep it off of the vomit.

Quinn couldn't see or think clearly through the pain. Just moving her neck had turned her vision white. She could feel tears on her cheeks, but she refused to cry any harder because it would force her face to move.

"Shhh, honey, it's okay." Rachel hushed, tears pricking her own eyes at Quinn's whimpers. She collected the blanket easily with one hand and bundled it into a ball to be washed later. "Quinn, sweetheart. I'm going to let go for a minute, okay? Just to clean this up, but I'll be back."

Rachel pried Quinn's reluctant fingers out of her hand and hurried away to grab another blanket. She returned and draped it over Quinn, tucking it snugly under Quinn's right side and giving the left some air. The floor was mostly covered in sand, so it soaked up a lot of the vomit, and Rachel shoveled it all into a bucket to be disposed of.

She truly deserved a medal for preventing _herself_ from vomiting today.

Rachel took Quinn's hand again, glad to see that she was managing to stay still. Quinn squeezed tightly. Far more tightly than before. Her shoulders heaved with the sobs she was barely restraining.

Rachel leaned forward and wiped the tears off of Quinn's right cheek, letting her fingers trail through Quinn's hair soothingly. She had absolutely no idea what to do.

So she sang. Billie Holiday's "Sun Showers."

And for once, Quinn was glad that the silence was filled. By this soft, warm, full voice like honey.

Rachel slowed the song down and hummed a bit where she forgot the words because it had been _so long_ since she'd heard it, but Quinn's shoulders gradually stopped shaking, and her grip on Rachel's hand finally relaxed.

Rachel took a deep breath when she realized that Quinn was finally asleep. She stood up to press a kiss to her cheek. "Good night, Quinn." She murmured.

And then she settled into her chair with her head on Quinn's cot to watch over her new friend for the rest of the night.

_Sun showers_

_Never mind the rain_

_The sun will shine again_

_Through sun showers_


	2. Chapter 2

**Sun Showers: Chapter 2**

Dive bombers silenced the _Jean Bart_ two days after the beach landing. It was November tenth, and the incessant drumming in the distance finally halted. Or quieted enough so that it seemed like it had ceased altogether.

Rachel was glad. The battleship's guns had been like perpetual hammers inside her head. Quinn had been asleep for over twenty-four hours, and incoherent when she was awake, minutes at a time. Rachel hoped she'd come back around now that the beach was calm.

It seemed like Quinn appreciated the quiet. Or that was the feeling Rachel had gotten during their pain-tainted, fatigue-tinged conversation forty-eight hours earlier.

"I swear, when I get home, I'm never looking at another naked body again." Nurse Jones drawled, dropping into the wooden chair in the sand next to Rachel.

They watched the active camp milling about and the waves shifting the light boats on the shore.

"I don't believe you, Mercedes." Rachel said easily, rolling her eyes. "It's impulsive decisions like that which lead to the most regret. And, I mean…naked bodies can be good."

Mercedes groaned lowly. She held a hand up to Rachel like "stop right there."

Rachel chuckled. "When they're not sweaty strangers who try to grope you at every opportunity."

"Girl, just…stop." Mercedes instructed, shaking her head at the images. Or the memories. She straightened her cap on her head and stretched backwards in the chair. "Most of them are admirable. We've just got a few rogues."

Those random soldiers who were maybe a little tipsy with drugs or off their heads or just cocky flirts looking for loving. Most were sweet. Rachel would kiss their cheeks and wrap their bandages and move on.

"And speaking of rogues and naked bodies," Mercedes continued. Rachel huffed exasperatedly. "You've got a piece of work in Ensign St. James to go home to, so-"

"No, no, no, no, no." Rachel interrupted, sputtering a bit and sitting forward abruptly. Mercedes looked amused, tilting her head to the side lazily. "Jesse is my _friend_. We came from the same place on the same ship, and I have no desire to ever see him naked, thank you very much."

Rachel didn't know if there was a man alive right now who she'd want to see naked. She didn't really know what that meant.

Mercedes shrugged amicably. "Whatever you say."

Rachel sighed. She took her cap off and tilted her head up to watch the sky. It was a lovely blue. The guns were so quiet right now, she could pretend they were just sea birds cawing in the distance. Odd-sounding birds, but comforting. Mixed in with the relieved laughter and muffled hum of Port Lyautey.

Rachel only realized she'd closed her eyes when a shadow was cast over her face. She blinked her eyes open to see Nurse Pierce standing in front of her with Santana Lopez at her side.

"I just took her to visit Quinn Fabray." Brittany explained, peering down at Rachel with a smile.

And if Rachel could understand why her heart jumped into her throat at that, maybe she could also understand why the thought of a naked Jesse St. James made her a little bit sick.

"She's still asleep." Brittany added hurriedly when Rachel looked like she was about to sprint back into the tent. Rachel relaxed again and took a deep breath. "Her vitals are up though, so maybe she'll be awake soon." Brittany offered hopefully.

Rachel nodded. She needed to get back inside.

Santana stood slightly behind Brittany, uniform clipped and clean. Her jaw was set and she stood up straight, but her eyes were soft on Mercedes and Rachel. Everybody was on the same side here. They all understood that.

"I'm going to show Santana what she can take to help her headaches." Brittany said, turning on her heel in the sand. "And her bunkmate has nosebleeds, so those too. I'll be back before my shift."

Rachel nodded, smiling her goodbye. Mercedes waved as they left.

And then Rachel was up like a flash and peeling off her jacket because it just got so _stuffy_ inside the tent sometimes.

Mercedes chuckled wryly. "Rachel, you know there are other nurses who can take care of her, right?" she asked, gesturing vaguely at the canvas door.

Rachel huffed, hurriedly rolling up her sleeves. "I'm aware, _Mercedes_. But I-she-I don't…"

Mercedes stared at her.

"She knows me. I'm…familiar, at least." Rachel managed to get out, avoiding Mercedes' eyes. "She'll be more comfortable with me."

Rachel thought that made sense. She didn't know why enumerating the reasons she cared for third officer Quinn Fabray made her stutter.

Mercedes watched her with some sort of deeper understanding in her eyes, all trace of naked body talk gone. "You're right." She said simply after a minute. "Be good."

Rachel narrowed her eyes. What was _that_ supposed to mean? She waved Mercedes off, a little bit lost in confusion, and shuffled inside the tent and down the line of cots to Quinn. She sighed in relief as soon as she caught sight of the choppy blonde hair.

Quinn let out a rumbly groan as soon as Rachel squeezed her hand, like Rachel had pressed a button. Rachel almost jumped back in surprise. She leaned forward instead and brushed the hair off of Quinn's wounded cheek.

Quinn felt like she'd been asleep for _weeks_. Her limbs were heavy and warm and the pain was only intense on her face and her shoulder right now.

"Rachel." Quinn husked, eyes still closed.

Rachel smiled to herself. "Hey, sleepyhead." She whispered.

Quinn sighed heavily, wincing a bit as her chest moved. Her sling shifted and Rachel carefully put it back in place. She did a quick check under the blanket to make sure Quinn's leg was okay and then reached behind her with one hand to retrieve new bandages for her arm.

"It's-it's dark." Quinn murmured.

Rachel began peeling away the red fabric over Quinn's left shoulder. "Your eyes are closed." She informed, lips quirked up, watching Quinn's confused face.

Quinn's eyes fluttered open slowly. Her lids felt like they were weighed down. She was finally able to focus on Rachel, who was carefully rewrapping the mess that was Quinn's shoulder. Quinn tried not to look at it. She kept her gaze on Rachel's soft face and kind eyes.

Rachel glanced at her and did a double-take when she saw Quinn staring. "How do you feel?" she asked, lifting Quinn's arm gently.

Quinn swallowed. "My face-" Her words didn't even come out that time because her voice was so raw. She cleared her throat. "My face and my arm are the worst."

Rachel nodded sympathetically. She'd expected that. The raw skin on Quinn's leg and abdomen had time to heal a little bit. Everything that had been exposed during the explosion was far worse.

"When can I walk?" Quinn continued. She ran her tongue around her mouth because it felt foreign to her. At least there was no sand in it.

Rachel frowned. "Are you serious?"

Quinn blinked up at her. She shifted her left arm and was blinded with pain, but managed not to throw up, so that was an improvement. Rachel put a hand on her shoulder to keep her still.

"It's just…a little pain. I'll be fine." Quinn insisted, even as tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't-I need to get out of the bed. I can't lie here, not fully clothed, and in need of a _bed pan_, and…"

Quinn exhaled sharply, rolling her eyes around. She was being serious. She was supposed to be fighting a war, and now she was reduced to this? It was not acceptable. It was pathetic, as was the blush on her cheeks.

Rachel bit her lip, finished with the bandage. "Just a few days." She said quietly. "Then you should be able to walk without…fainting. Or vomiting."

Quinn stared straight up at the canopy ceiling. Maybe if she was completely still her shoulder would stop throbbing. She let Rachel take her right hand.

"Are there others who have it worse than this?" Quinn questioned after a few minutes. She narrowed her eyes, still staring straight up. "I mean, I'm not trying to be…_awful_. I just-I'm curious."

Rachel licked her lips and tilted her head. She glanced around discreetly, eyeing the other patients in various states of wakefulness. "There were…several who lost limbs." She explained quietly.

Quinn's eyes swiveled over to meet hers. The hazel stood out against the raw, red tissue surrounding her left one.

"_Many_ casualties," Rachel continued softly. "A few with burns…Gunshot wounds."

Rachel was going to say that she hadn't seen anybody's face quite as affected as Quinn's, but that didn't seem like something that needed to be pointed out. It could only bring them down.

Quinn just needed to be told _it could be worse_. No matter what happens, _it could be worse_. It provided a tiny bit of relief. Her pale skin may be marred and mangled for the rest of her life, but at least she'd _have_ a "rest of her life."

"You're very strong, Quinn." Rachel stated when Quinn didn't say anything. "And brave. You have nothing to be ashamed of and you'll be out of here soon."

Quinn knew she had _a lot_ to be ashamed of, but she allowed warm, charming Rachel Berry to say kind things to her because her shoulder hurt so badly.

"Thank you." Quinn murmured.

Rachel smiled. She couldn't identify all of the emotions swirling around those hazel eyes, but most of the fear was gone. There was sadness, pain, maybe amusement because Rachel had a small gold elephant pinned to her white shirt.

Quinn's eyes were fixed on it.

"Would you like me to sing?" Rachel wondered, squeezing Quinn's hand. "I think it helped you relax when we first talked."

And Rachel was always looking for an opportunity to sing.

Quinn wiggled her toes, glad that she could move _something_ without devolving into excruciating pain. She had absolutely nothing better to do, so she nodded slightly.

And Rachel jumped right in. This time it was "I Wished on the Moon." And it made Quinn's lips twitch and her eyes droop and her chest warm.

_I looked for every loveliness_

_It all came true_

_I wished on the moon for you_

~oooooooooooooooooo~

The beach settled even further over the next few days. Casablanca surrendered and the naval battle ceased, so those drums in the distance finally fell silent. Eisenhower began consolidating forces in Algeria to move them to Tunisia, where the Axis powers were building up the Fifth Panzer Army.

Quinn's unit would remain at Port Lyautey for an indeterminate amount of time.

This was good. Rachel knew that if Quinn had been ordered to Tunisia, she wouldn't have hesitated in rolling herself off that little cot and hobbling all the way there. Arm in a sling and stiches popping out and determined hazel eyes masking her fear.

Rachel had only known Quinn for about five days, but she felt like she could read her so easily. Unless she was just getting everything horribly wrong. Hopefully that wasn't the case.

"I like 'Cheek to Cheek.'" Quinn admitted with a flush. She was propped up in her cot today, newly bandaged and angled away from the small group of people situated around her. She figured her face must look repulsive.

"I know it's…sappy." She continued hesitantly, staring down at the fingers that peeked out from her sling. "But it's nice. And it's Fred Astaire, so…"

Rachel smiled at her, perched on the end of her bed.

"Um, no. Hold on a second." Nurse Jones interjected. She waved at Rachel from her little wooden chair. "You've let Quinn request the last five songs, Rachel. Give someone else a chance."

Rachel pursed her lips. Quinn glanced at her with a half-smile.

"But it was a nice choice, Quinn." Brittany assured from across the aisle, absently wrapping a man's leg. She realized she was using the wrong side of the bandage and unwound it quickly to flip it over.

Santana watched her and then smirked at Quinn. "Yeah, a nice choice for _pansies._"

Quinn flushed even darker as her eyes shot to Santana's. She tilted forward like she was planning on tearing off her blanket and marching over there, so Rachel decided to shut this down.

"It is my voice, and I have the right to sing whatever and for whomever I would like." She stated, chin held high.

"Just let someone else pick." Quinn suggested quietly, meeting Rachel's eyes briefly before turning her head so the left side of her face couldn't be seen. Rachel gazed at her, uncertain. She'd sang one song for the man across the aisle, one for Brittany, and then five for Quinn.

It seemed even enough.

"'A-Tisket, A-Tasket,'" Mercedes offered, eyebrows raised at the group around her.

"_A brown and yellow basket_." Brittany sang lightly, still frowning at her bandage work. The soldier she was working on was frowning too. Mercedes got up to help.

Quinn hummed, lips quirked up. Her face was slowly becoming more expressive as she found that she could move it without crying. "I like that one too." She murmured.

Rachel narrowed her eyes at her. "Are you just saying that?"

Quinn really wasn't. She liked that song. It was almost as happy as the Fred Astaire one she'd picked. And she'd noticed that when Rachel sang happy songs her brown eyes grew brighter and she'd move her hands slowly through the air, swaying and singing through a smile.

Santana scoffed. "Hey, nurse Berry. No need to play favorites with Quinn. She's a big girl."

"I'm not playing favorites, Officer _Lopez_." Rachel returned, placing her hands on her hips even though she was still seated on Quinn's cot. "But Quinn's the one in the bed with sixty stitches and burns down the left side of her body, so I don't want to sit here and sing something that she may not enjoy."

Santana rolled her eyes a little bit, but looked suitably chastised.

"You have a nice voice." Quinn commented softly, watching Rachel out of the corner of her eye because she still refused to turn her head.

Rachel stopped glaring at Santana to smile at Quinn. "Thank you! I've been singing since I was two."

"Yep," Mercedes called, finished with the bandage. "She hasn't shut up for nineteen years."

"Are you-is that what you do professionally?" Quinn asked, impressed. It was rare that a woman would be able to make a life for herself doing that. And it was certainly better than Quinn had been doing. Drifting down the west coast like a bum. She picked absently at the edge of her shoulder bandage.

Rachel watched her for a second, and then stood up and moved to Quinn's head. She grabbed Quinn's hand gently and shook her head. "Don't pick."

"Rachel was on Broadway!" Brittany proclaimed, straightening Santana's collar.

Quinn glanced at Rachel, finally able to raise an eyebrow. Her mangled cheek was no longer directed at the canvas wall. Everybody was polite enough not to stare.

Rachel smiled proudly. "I was Adriana in _The Boys from Syracuse_."

"Can you sing something from that?" Quinn asked immediately, just because she couldn't stop herself. She recognized the title. It was based on a Shakespearean comedy. Long lost twins with servants who were also long lost twins reunite, and everybody's identities are mistaken by the wives.

Mercedes looked like she was about to say something.

"I mean after-after the Ella Fitzgerald." Quinn amended quickly. "Or, you know, not at all if you don't want. It doesn't matter to me."

Santana snorted.

"How do you two know each other?" Rachel asked, gesturing at Quinn and Santana. They were either awful friends, or such good friends that they could make fun of each other with no problems.

Quinn stayed silent. She turned the side of her face back to the canvas wall.

Santana shrugged. "We go way back."

Well, that was descriptive. Rachel accepted it and nodded easily. Everybody out here had their own story and she didn't want to pry. She'd probably never see any of them again after a week or so anyway.

"Are you going to sing or not?" Mercedes questioned impatiently.

Rachel sighed heavily. Quinn squeezed her hand, amused at how much exasperation Rachel had managed to convey in a single sigh. Rachel smiled at her and broke into "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" for their little section of the first-aid tent.

~oooooooooooooooooooooo~

Nurse Pillsbury stood at the foot of Quinn's bed, squinting down at a yellowed sheet of paper with a list of names on it. The paper had been passing through the camp all day. A list of those who had not survived the landings or the naval battle of the previous week.

Rachel didn't really want to look at it. It seemed like an _awful _list.

Quinn was biting her lip, gaze hard, and sitting up with her legs over the edge of the bed and the sling close to her body. Rachel had found a light button down shirt and pants for her to wear which wouldn't constrict her raw skin too badly.

"Is he on there?" Quinn asked roughly, eyeing the paper in the nurse's hands.

Nurse Pillsbury hummed, moving quickly down the list.

And then she looked up and met Quinn's determined gaze. "Noah Puckerman, of the 3rd Infantry Division, is alive at Fedala." She stated, smiling slightly.

Quinn knew it must be hard to smile after reading a list of names like that. Quinn sighed deeply in relief, only wincing slightly at the tightening of the skin on her abdomen.

"Thank you." She whispered. She stared down at her knees until she could be sure there were no tears in her eyes.

Nurse Pillsbury nodded kindly. "You're welcome. I'm glad your friend is okay." She said before moving to the next bed.

Quinn squeezed her knee with her right hand, not at all surprised when small black shoes moved into her line of vision. She didn't look up at Rachel, even when Rachel started slowly untying her sling to replace the bandages on her arm. Quinn just focused on the waves that she could always hear these days.

Rachel swallowed. She didn't know how much was appropriate to ask, but she figured that if she didn't jump, she'd never know.

"Are you…with Noah?" she asked hesitantly, glancing at Quinn's face. All she could see was bed-ruffled blonde hair. "I mean, are you his girl? Is he your-"

Quinn exhaled sharply through her nose and Rachel stopped talking. Quinn kept staring at her knees.

"No. Definitely not." Quinn said quietly, turning her head away as Rachel unwrapped the red-stained bandages. She'd vomit if she had to look at it again.

The gash was raised, bright red and surrounded by inflamed, raw skin. Rachel ran a cool cloth along the line of stitches to Quinn's back, dabbing gently, and then sprinkled sulfa powder in the same area. She reached behind her for a clean bandage and Quinn finally spoke again.

"We were just on the same boat. Literally." She explained, gritting her teeth with the pressure Rachel was applying.

"Too tight?" Rachel asked, quickly loosening the bandage. Quinn nodded. Rachel clasped her left hand in apology before wrapping again.

"On the troopship, the day after we left, I was sort of snooping outside the men's quarters looking for pants when Noah found me." Quinn told Rachel, feeling it safe to look back at her shoulder now. "He's sort of…arrogant. And he'll come off as conceited if you don't know him, but he asked me what I was doing and said he'd give me pants if I played a game with him."

It had seemed sketchy at the time, yes. Quinn nodded at the dubious look Rachel was giving her.

"He just wanted to play cards." Quinn explained. Rachel grasped her wrist carefully to guide it back into the sling. "He didn't have anybody missing him at home, and I knew how that-I mean…I think he just wanted a nice person to be around for a while. So he gave me some pants and I played cards with him every day. And then before we got here, I drew him a picture so that he'd have something to hold onto."

Quinn remembered it clearly. The look in Noah's eyes when she'd handed him the small sketch of the elephant with "we'll get there" scrawled on the back. She didn't know who "we" was, or where "there" was, but it had seemed appropriate.

Everybody going off to fight should have _something_ to hold onto. Something to remind them to hold on. To get up and spit out the sand because there's that memento in your pocket or around your neck and that's what you're fighting for. Whatever that stands for.

Quinn had her cross. She wasn't sure what it stood for.

"That was nice of you." Rachel commented. She settled Quinn's sling back by her side and moved up to dab at Quinn's face. Quinn flinched away reflexively and Rachel pressed a soft hand to her jaw to hold her in place.

"Everyone needs someone to think of while they're over here." Quinn murmured.

Rachel glanced at her eyes. "Do you have someone?"

Quinn just shook her head. Rachel held her still again.

"Do you?" Quinn wondered a minute later.

Rachel winced along with Quinn as she dabbed alcohol over Quinn's cheek. "I don't have a guy. I have…my dads." Rachel offered quietly, gauging Quinn's reaction out of the corner of her eye.

It took a few seconds for Quinn to realize that Rachel had pluralized it. Mostly because her cheek was burning and it was hard to focus. But then Quinn's eyes darted to Rachel's, asking for her to continue.

"I love them, and they love me." Rachel stated clearly. She blinked a little because she could feel tears prickling her eyes. "And that's what I'm going home for. For my dads."

She always felt like she was trying to prove something when she told people she had two dads. Defending somebody who shouldn't need to be defended. They weren't very public with their relationship, and they'd only met when Rachel's mother had died when Rachel was a baby. She actually remembered calling Hiram her uncle until she was about five.

Quinn gazed up at her, judgement free. She looked like she had something to say, but she kept her mouth closed.

Rachel swallowed, trying to keep her tears at bay. She absently brushed a thumb along Quinn's healthy cheek while she dabbed alcohol on the other one.

"I'm sure they miss you." Quinn murmured after a moment. She reached up and wiped away a tear that rolled down Rachel's cheek.

Rachel gave her a watery smile. She could see her dads' smiling faces, arguing over whose turn it was to pick up the milk and singing in the kitchen and throwing wooden balls at the bottles at the carnival to win Rachel numerous teddy bears.

She hadn't seen them in two years. But she made sure to sound as hopeful and upbeat as possible in all the letters she sent home.

Rachel finished with Quinn's cheek and lifted up her shirt to check her side.

"Your parents must be missing you as well." Rachel said softly, dabbing at the raw skin with a cloth.

Quinn tensed. Her gaze dropped to her knees again and she stayed silent. It was better to just keep all of her family stuff in a tidy little box shoved off to the side. Learning that Rachel had two fathers almost untied that box.

Rachel bit the inside of her cheek, scared that she'd said something wrong. She opted for a subject change. "Does your stomach still hurt?" she asked, dropping Quinn's shirt back down and trying to catch her eye. "Are you hungry? Because I can bring you more food."

Quinn's lips twitched. She dragged her gaze up slowly to Rachel's. "I know you gave me part of your breakfast this morning."

Rachel plastered a confused expression on her face.

Quinn smiled fully at her and wiped the tear track off Rachel's cheek. "Don't try to deny it, Rachel."

Rachel scoffed and shook her head. Yes, she'd given Quinn half of her soup, but Quinn was basically re-growing her arm. She needed the nutrients more than Rachel did. "I don't know what you're talking about." Rachel muttered.

"You don't have to give me your food." Quinn said plainly, letting Rachel help her lie back down. "You don't even know me."

Rachel watched her for a minute and brushed the blonde hair off of Quinn's face and behind her head. She shrugged. "I know you a little bit."

"I could be a horrible person." Quinn returned bluntly, looking up at Rachel. "A killer back home. A robber. You don't know me enough."

Rachel tilted her head. "I think you're a good person."

Quinn dropped her gaze and sighed quietly. "I'd like to be."

"Somebody's missing you, Quinn." Rachel said softly, leaning forward so that nobody else could hear. She waited for Quinn to meet her eyes again. "There's no doubt in my mind. Somebody loves you and somebody's missing you right now."

Quinn's eyes grew shiny with tears and Rachel ran a soothing hand through her hair.

Rachel just seemed so sure. Quinn believed it for a minute.

"I'll get to know you some more. Until we move on." Rachel continued, adjusting Quinn's blanket. "And if it turns out you're a bank robber," Rachel shrugged easily. "You probably had a good reason."

"You're such a good person." Quinn whispered. She'd never met anyone so kind.

Rachel smiled. "I'm a bank robber too."

"Who gives me extra soup."

"Call me if you don't feel well, okay?" Rachel checked, reaching out to squeeze Quinn's hand.

Quinn just nodded at her.

"Or if you want to sit up, or if you get hungry."

Quinn nodded again.

"Or if-"

"Nurse Berry." Quinn interrupted, one side of her mouth quirked up. Rachel raised her eyebrows. "Thank you." Quinn whispered.

Quinn felt like she thanked Rachel every day. Like she couldn't thank her enough. The words were just too small. She owed this woman her _arm_.

Rachel nodded and smiled. She squeezed Quinn's hand before backing away. "You're very welcome, Quinn."

And then she strolled off down the aisle of cots, and Quinn tried to block out the pain in her arm so that she could sleep. She found that replaying the songs Rachel sang that morning helped her to do that. But then her thoughts drifted to Rachel's dads, and then her own parents, and then tears started dripping out of her eyes and down her cheeks and into her pillow.

Quinn almost wasn't aware when Rachel returned, eyes warm and soft hands wiping her tears away.

And singing. Always singing.

Against the waves in the background, it felt like home.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: The scene breaks weren't showing up, so I've fixed those, and small warning for a tiny bit of gore in this chapter. Thanks everybody for your kind words!

**Sun Showers: Chapter 3**

By late November, battle was raging on the roads to Tunis. The 36th Brigade was held up by rain and Luftwaffe local air superiority, while the 11th Brigade was met with stiff resistance at Medjez. Port Lyautey remained a secure checkpoint, so new trucks of injured soldiers were shuttled in a couple times a week.

Quinn told Rachel that being at Port Lyautey felt like sitting in a restaurant with your back against the wall. It felt safe.

Except it wasn't, because naval forces could creep up any day.

Rachel grew used to her routine. Wake up, check, medicate, and re-bandage everybody, have breakfast, treat new arrivals, have lunch with Quinn, check, medicate, and re-bandage again, have dinner, sing for the patients, and finally sleep.

Or lie awake in bed for hours on end.

On a slow day, when the battle hundreds of miles away was in a lull, Rachel found herself spending extra time with third officer Quinn Fabray. Talking about Rachel's days on Broadway or what New York was like or how Rachel had become friends with Brittany and Mercedes.

Quinn offered very little information about herself, and Rachel never pried. Her heart felt heavy every time she reminded herself that she'd probably never see any of her patients again.

"The Soviets have launched a counter-attack at Stalingrad." Quinn stated one day, a week from December.

She was clinging to Rachel's side, trying not to fall over as they shuffled out of the canvas tent and towards a couple wooden chairs on the beach. Quinn just wanted to see the water. She could either drag her raw skin through the sand, or be supported by Rachel.

Rachel had quickly agreed.

"I think they'll go for the Axis flanks." Quinn continued, gritting her teeth as Rachel's fingers squeezed her mangled shoulder.

"Sorry, sorry." Rachel apologized quickly. She watched the sand in front of them to make sure there no holes or things for Quinn to trip over.

"The Romanians." Quinn kept talking, eyes focused only on the chairs in front of her. If she could just make it there and sit down, she would be alright. "I think they'll try to trap them inside the city for the winter."

It was what Quinn thought about all night when her face was throbbing too badly to sleep. It was objective, a game of strategy, and less painful than thinking about her parents. Rachel hummed along distractedly, sighing in relief when she could finally deposit Quinn in the chair.

Quinn sighed as well, more vocally, like a moan, and Rachel sat next to her while they caught their breath.

Quinn's vision swam, and she blinked repeatedly to clear it.

Rachel rested a warm hand on her uninjured arm. "Are you alright? Are you going to be sick?"

Quinn exhaled sharply and shook her head. The spots were slowly disappearing. She breathed in the salty air.

Rachel watched her intently. "You seem to enjoy it more than anybody else."

Quinn turned her head slowly, eyebrow arched. "What?"

"The beach." Rachel said with a shrug. "The sand, seeing the water, the sound of the waves. Nobody _else_ would threaten to drag themselves through the dirt just to see the ocean."

Quinn's lips twitched. "It reminds me of home."

Rachel tried not to appear too eager. She nodded slowly, waiting on pins for Quinn to continue.

"Southern California." Quinn said, watching Rachel out of the corner of her eye. She could see that Rachel's body had tensed and she half-smiled to herself because it was obvious this woman cared. If Rachel had floppy ears, they would be perked up right now.

"I lived near San Diego." Quinn informed, digging her boots in the sand. "But I…I mean, I've been all up the west coast. _A lot_ of beaches."

A more apt description would be that Quinn had homelessly bummed her way along the west coast, but she wasn't ready to reveal that to Rachel. Because then she'd have to tell Rachel _why_, and that was just a box that Quinn really didn't want to open.

Rachel listened quietly. "I've only been to the New York beaches." She said when it was clear that Quinn had finished.

Quinn nodded. A group of soldiers walked past, and Quinn turned her head away so that her red, scarring cheek was hidden. Rachel watched the movement with soft, sympathetic eyes. She reached out and grabbed Quinn's hand.

The soldiers nodded respectfully at Quinn and continued on their way.

"Do you know anyone who's serving out here?" Quinn asked abruptly, turning to face Rachel and wincing at the movement.

Rachel blinked, a little surprised. "Oh…yes. Yes I do."

Quinn kept staring.

"Um, my…a former boyfriend of mine is in Germany." Rachel told her quietly, flicking her eyes back to the water and trying to determine if the block spot in the distance was a bird or a person. "His name's Finn. He may not still be there, but…I don't know."

Rachel didn't like to think about that too often. It made her sick.

Quinn leaned back in her chair. "I grew up with Santana." She offered softly.

Rachel's lips quirked up. "I'm sorry."

Quinn reached over and lightly smacked Rachel's forearm, groaning when her body twisted with the motion. She slumped back in her chair and curled her toes and waited for the pain to pass.

"Honey, sit still." Rachel chided, concerned. She was ready to fetch a few guys to carry Quinn back to her cot if it was necessary. Rachel would try it herself, but then they'd just require even more medical attention.

Quinn eyed her. "I was saying something."

Rachel held up a hand. "Right, Santana." She nodded and turned to face the water again. "Please continue."

She had determined the black spot out on the water was actually a bird. It was nice to know there were other living things out there in all the chaos. Voluntarily bobbing along the water, watching the mess. If they could survive, so could Rachel.

And Quinn. Rachel would like Quinn to survive. Very much.

"She moved away when we were ten." Quinn stated, picking at the edge of her cast. Rachel nudged her in the shoulder so that she'd stop. "And then I didn't see her again until Des Moines, but…you just never forget, I guess."

Rachel agreed. "Especially out here."

Quinn was contemplative in her wooden chair, mulling many things over, like why Finn Hudson was Rachel's _former_ boyfriend and why Santana had told her that she didn't want to leave Brittany Pierce behind if they were shipped to Tunisia.

Quinn was just confused in general these days.

"Why don't you have a boyfriend?" she asked impulsively. Her face and shoulder hurt too much for her to think anything over. It was an easy excuse.

Rachel didn't mind, but she was just as confused as Quinn. Why _didn't_ she have a boyfriend? Rachel knew the answer. She just hadn't embraced it yet.

"I…Well, with Finn, we're just better as friends." Rachel offered vaguely, squinting her eyes at the seabird. "And I just…haven't met…that person."

Quinn's lips twitched. "What person?"

Rachel sighed. "You know, _that_ person." She emphasized with a wave. "The one who makes you want to put a piano in your apartment just so you can play for them. Who makes you want to-to paint a swing gold, to stumble over your words, to kiss with wine on your lips and then fall asleep in the sand. To sing Billie Holiday all night while dancing around a dark room."

Rachel thought about it a lot. What she would do when she was in love. Most of it was fantastic, dramatic, and few people took her seriously.

She glanced at Quinn's thoughtful expression and smiled. "_Oh, you're so lovely, with your smile so warm and your cheeks so soft_," Rachel sang lightly, "_there is nothing for me but to love you, just the way you look tonight_."

Quinn's eyes grew even warmer. "That sounds perfect." She murmured, barely louder than the waves, holding Rachel's gaze.

Rachel flushed bashfully. "It's what I think about before I fall asleep."

Quinn wished she could think about those things before she fell asleep. She watched Rachel for another moment, letting her finish "The Way You Look Tonight."

They were interrupted when Nurse Pierce jogged breathlessly out to their chairs.

Brittany looked stricken. Rachel was up immediately, music forgotten.

"Rachel, we need to get ready. Trucks will be arriving soon." Brittany informed breathlessly.

"The 36th Brigade was ambushed."

~oooooooooooooooooooo~

Quinn watched the scene unfold with muted horror. She tried so hard to keep her eyes closed, lying in her cot and blocking out the chaos, but failed. Most of the beds were occupied now and tended by various harried nurses, but Quinn's eyes were locked on a cot right across the aisle, a few yards to the left.

There was a person in the bed, a man, as far as Quinn could tell. He wasn't making any noise, but he only had one leg, and Quinn sort of wanted to throw up. She would have if she hadn't known how painful it would be.

The six nurses around the man's bed were yelling and running and gesturing wildly.

Quinn sunk down in her cot and pressed her pillow over the right side of her face to block out the noise. She peered at Rachel with one eye, standing at the soldier's head and whispering in his ear while she dabbed around his hairline.

Rachel was so careful and kind. She turned her head away to compose herself a few times and then went back to murmuring in the man's ear.

Quinn wondered what she was saying, and if that was how Rachel was when Quinn had been brought in.

"Soak it up! Soak it up! I can't see!" One of the nurses cried loudly. Quinn pinched the skin at her hip and shut her eyes tightly. "Something's ruptured!"

Quinn's arm throbbed. The patients in the cots around her seemed too dazed to be paying attention to the guy losing his leg. Quinn had never been more focused than ever. She desperately wanted to get up and walk right out of the tent, and maybe just continue on to the sea, but she knew she wouldn't even reach the door.

"Heart rate's dropping." Mercedes called out in a warning tone from the man's side.

Nurse Pillsbury ran down the aisle with a stack of bandages and small bottles in her arms. She dropped everything onto the small table next to the soldier's cot and pushed one of the nurses aside to get near his leg.

"He's not gonna make it." One of them remarked loudly.

Quinn watched Rachel put her hands over the man's ears, still dabbing at his hairline. Rachel had removed her coat. She had blood streaked on her face and down her shirt and her hair was falling out of its neat little bun.

One of the nurses moved to start chest compressions and Quinn got a clear view of the man's body. She twisted sideways, groaning at the pain but legitimately believing that she was about to be sick.

Nothing came up, and she shut her eyes and pressed her good cheek against the cool sheet, trying to remain completely still.

"He's lost too much blood!" The nurses' voices grew more frantic, and Quinn was glad that she was in too much pain to turn and watch them. She dug her fingers into the sheets and tried to hear the waves over the yelling.

"There's no heartbeat." Somebody proclaimed shakily.

It resounded in Quinn's ears, ringing like the guns from the _Jean Bart_ a week ago.

"No!" Rachel countered, unnaturally high-pitched. "Keep going! You can still-you can still-"

Quinn rolled back onto her back because hearing Rachel's voice like that was scaring her. She gritted her teeth and gripped the sheets until the pain subsided.

"Nurse Berry." Nurse Pillsbury said, quietly but firmly, seizing Rachel's arm to prevent her from continuing chest compressions.

Rachel had tears running down her face. She was stricken. Distraught, just like every other time this happened. The soldier had seemed like a nice man, with a cross around his neck and a picture of a woman in his pocket. He had light brown hair and Rachel had seen his blue eyes before they closed forever.

Rachel pressed a hand over her mouth in an attempt to compose herself, and Nurse Pillsbury guided her backwards and up the aisle a bit.

Quinn watched her, trying to calm the hammering in her own heart because she now had a clear view of the man's bed and it was _terrifying_.

Rachel backed into the foot of Quinn's cot, jumping lightly and whirling around to see what it was. She stared at Quinn, eyes wide and watery and distressed, and Quinn gazed back, always calm on the outside. She hesitantly held up her good hand for Rachel, and Rachel swallowed and stepped closer and took it.

She squeezed a little too hard, but it gave Quinn something to focus on that wasn't horrific and terrible.

"Rachel." Quinn whispered, tugging on her arm to get her to turn away from the soldier. Rachel's eyes were fixed on him.

"_Rachel_." Quinn tried again, more sternly.

Rachel swiveled abruptly and half-sat on the edge of Quinn's bed. Silent tears were still rolling down her cheeks and her mouth was twisted up to keep herself quiet.

Quinn's voice was rough from disuse, but she sang anyway, because that's what Rachel would've done. And Rachel was kind and warm and a good person.

It was the second half of "Sun Showers," and Rachel relaxed just as Quinn had.

_Raise their happy eyes up to flaming skies_

_The sun showers leave us as they follow_

_Rainbows in our hearts, the gray skies_

_Soon will be clear, my dear, while sun showers are here_

~oooooooooooooooo~

Somebody came and took the soldier's body away later that evening when Quinn was half-asleep.

"His name was Harris." A nurse whispered over the thumping and shuffling.

Quinn ingrained that name into her head. _Harris_. His name was Harris. She'd try to always remember Harris. She imagined he was a young, happy guy. An ambitious guy, who wanted to be a doctor after the war and who had a pretty girlfriend and small, scruffy dog waiting for him at home.

It was a little unfair that Quinn was alive and Harris wasn't. She didn't have any scruffy dogs to go home to. To take care of. To love and be loved by.

At midnight, Quinn still hadn't fallen asleep. She wondered if Harris had any regrets.

And then it occurred to Quinn that if she died tomorrow, she would definitely have regrets. And she needed to fix that. So she slowly, painstakingly sat up in bed and pushed the covers off. Her abdomen burned, but after a few minutes of unhurried, deliberate movements, she went a little numb and put on her boots.

She couldn't lace them with one hand, so she left them untied and walked carefully through the dimly lit tent so she wouldn't trip. Everybody else was sleeping. Or minding their own business.

Quinn walked all the way out to the edge of the water and sat down in the sand, finding it surprisingly easy to ignore all the pain in her left side. At least she had both her legs.

And she was lying on a beach, and she would never regret that.

"Fabray." A stern voice called out behind her.

Quinn rolled her eyes. Only Santana would be skulking around the camp in the dark.

"What are you doing?" Santana asked loudly, walking right up next to Quinn and staring down at her, brows furrowed.

Quinn could only see her eyes and part of her face in the moonlight.

She waved her good arm around vaguely. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

Santana scoffed and dropped herself down next to Quinn like she was being inconvenienced. "All I see is a cripple lying in the sand in the middle of the night, so…"

"And I see a crazy person sitting right there with her." Quinn stated, eyebrow lifting.

Santana shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."

Quinn nodded and sighed. It was quiet for a while, except for the waves. Santana reclined until she was on her back staring up at the stars.

"I want to tell somebody." Quinn said abruptly, burying a hand in the sand. Santana's gaze dragged over to her, but Quinn stared at the water. "Maybe Rachel. I've never told anybody except you and…my parents, and I don't want any regrets, you know?"

Santana nodded, getting sand in her hair. "You gotta do what you gotta do." She reached out and poked Quinn's hip. "And if you gotta do Nurse Berry, then-"

Quinn reached out and slapped her arm. Her face grew warm and flushed and Santana just smiled to herself and chuckled up at the stars.

"I think she'd understand." Quinn whispered, pressing a hand into her good cheek to wipe away the embarrassment. "She has two dads."

It sort of slipped out before Quinn could stop it, but she trusted Santana to keep that information to herself.

Santana watched the side of Quinn's head. "She will _definitely_ understand." She murmured seriously.

There was no doubt in Santana's mind. Rachel would understand, probably in more ways than Quinn was aware. Quinn was oblivious to a lot out there, content to stay tall and strong and quiet, while Santana did quite a bit of connecting the dots.

The results made Santana smirk.

"I don't want to be _killed_ and have nobody know who I really am." Quinn admitted quietly, voice rough.

Santana's smirk dropped. She sat up and scooted closer to Quinn and squeezed her good arm. Quinn finally turned to look at her, eyes vulnerable and honest. Maybe that's how they always were at midnight. Quinn waited for the dark to bring her walls down.

"Tell her." Santana urged softly. "She'll understand."

Quinn swallowed and nodded. Santana had a knowing expression on her face.

"I'm not-I don't _like_ her." Quinn reminded her friend. "She's just…a good person."

Santana nodded easily. Quinn would see the light soon enough.

"I'm going now." Quinn continued, shifting a bit so that she could stand up. Santana jumped up to help, steadying Quinn's good side.

"You're telling her _now_?" Santana questioned, surprised.

Quinn nodded, wincing at the pain in her face. "I could die before morning and no one would ever know the real me."

Santana pulled a face. "That's…depressing."

Quinn scowled at her.

"Get your ass in gear then, Fabray." Santana encouraged with a smile, pointing up the beach. "Let's see if you actually have the guts."

And now there was no way Quinn would back out. She stuck her good hand in the pocket of her linen pants and hunched over a bit because it was chilly, and then moved stiltedly up the beach towards the nurses' bunks. She knew which one Rachel was in because she'd been there before, and she stopped outside the tent and took a breath.

No regrets. For Harris.

Rachel was a dark lump in the cot closest to the entrance. The beds came up to about Quinn's knees, much shorter than the ones in the first-aid tent. Quinn tried to kneel down, but she knocked her sling into the night stand and was so blinded with pain that she lost her balance, toppling sideways against the cot.

"Shit. Shit." Quinn muttered, pulling herself to her knees.

Rachel stirred awake because it felt like the earth was shaking, but then she realized it was just her bed and it was a _person_ moving her bed, and she was confused. She blearily caught sight of choppy blonde hair and her eyes widened.

"_Quinn_?" she whispered disbelievingly.

Quinn groaned in response, waiting for her shoulder pain to fade.

Rachel sat up quickly and rested a hand on the top of Quinn's head. "What are you doing? There's a nurse on duty, right? Do you need something? What's wrong?"

Quinn's lips twitched. Rachel's hair stuck out in all directions. Her eyes were wide and worried and reflecting the dim, golden lamps. They were still a little red-rimmed from the events of earlier.

"Can I talk to you?" Quinn whispered, locked into a squat that she didn't know she'd ever be able to get out of.

Rachel gazed down at her. "Are you okay? Did you crawl all the way over here?"

Quinn nodded absently. "I want to tell you something."

Rachel leaned forward like she was about to throw the blankets off and climb out of bed, so Quinn seized her forearm and held her in place.

"It won't take long." Quinn explained.

Rachel stared for a moment, leaning against one elbow and wondering if Quinn had actually dragged herself all the way through the sand to get here. She nodded slowly for Quinn to continue.

"If something ever happens to me, I just want somebody out there in the world to know who I am." Quinn said shakily, hazel eyes boring into Rachel's.

Rachel frowned and nodded again.

Quinn swallowed. "I'm-I don't….I like women." She stated clearly. "I'm attracted to women. Not men."

And suddenly the waves were the loudest things in the world. The light breathing of the other nurses. The clicking of Quinn's hip. The wind blowing the flaps of the tent.

Rachel's mouth had dropped open, but she closed it as soon as she realized and softened her expression to not look so shocked. Her heart was beating faster, drumming inside her chest and sending little shockwaves to her toes. Her gaze flickered to the new layer of scar tissue on Quinn's cheek as she processed.

"Okay." Rachel said as soon as she was able to. It wasn't that she was shocked speechless, but it was the middle of the night and she wasn't functioning properly at all and this news made her heart flutter. She fumbled in the dark for Quinn's good hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "Okay."

Quinn bit her lip.

"Thank you for telling me, Quinn. Of course I support you and I'm proud of you, and you're just…." Rachel sighed and smiled wryly. "You're just as brave as that day I stitched you up."

Quinn flushed and looked down at her untied boots. "You're always calling me braver than I am."

Rachel smiled at her. "I'm good with people. I'm always right."

Quinn didn't say anything. She felt immense relief, and she stood up on wobbly, numb legs because she'd accomplished what she came to do. Rachel climbed out of bed before Quinn could stop her and wrapped an arm around Quinn's waist for support.

"What are you doing?" Quinn questioned, though it was pretty obvious.

Rachel bent down to tie Quinn's boots and looked up at her with shining brown eyes. "I'm escorting you back to your bed, officer Fabray. We can't have crazy patients wandering around in the dark."

Quinn smiled to herself in the dim light. Rachel shuffled her through the door and all the way back across the expanse of sand to the first-aid tent. She settled Quinn in bed and took off her boots and even rewrapped her shoulder because the bandage had turned red and sand was sticking to it.

Quinn's eyes were drooping closed when Rachel squeezed her hand again.

"You told me something, so now I want to tell you something." Rachel whispered, almost impulsively.

Quinn nodded against her pillow, watching Rachel intently.

"I've watched nine soldiers die under my care." Rachel admitted shakily, absently running a thumb along the back of Quinn's hand. "But I remember all of their names and faces because I know they have families and it would be the most awful thing in the world if their families never knew what happened to them."

Rachel's breath hitched. Quinn pulled Rachel's hand up and kissed it. Only half of Rachel's face was illuminated.

"But if anything were to happen to you," Rachel continued, gazing earnestly into Quinn's eyes, "I would remember more than your face and your name, third officer Quinn Fabray."

Quinn's lips quirked up.

"I'll remember that you love the beach and like women and the sound of the waves." Rachel said with a twinkle in her eyes. "And that you don't like tomato soup unless there's grilled cheese to go with it, and you won't eat it if there's somebody who needs it more. You're the girl who sweet-talked her way into the pants, and who tries not to smile too much because you think you'll seem weaker, but you have one of the sweetest smiles I've ever seen."

Quinn's ears were turning red. "Stop." She muttered, trying to tear her hand away from Rachel to put it over her eyes.

Rachel held tight, smiling fondly at Quinn. "Whatever happens, just know that there is a small, dark-haired, extremely talented nurse out there named Rachel Berry who knows the real you." Rachel spoke right into Quinn's ear.

"I'm glad I know you." Quinn murmured.

Rachel hummed. "We're definitely not killers or burglars. I'm glad you're with me."

Quinn shook her head. Rachel's fingers stayed tangled with hers until she fell asleep and Rachel's voice lilted softly through the air.

_My heart keeps missin' a heartbeat_

_Singin' its song about you_

_And although the song we know is old_

_It's still the sweetest story ever told_


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Happy WWII day of Faberry week! I watched a few WWII movies, so hopefully we're inching towards dialectical accuracy. Thanks for all your suggestions.

**Sun Showers: Chapter 4**

The nights grew colder and the waves grew choppier as winter advanced upon Port Lyautey. Small furnaces were moved into the first-aid shelter while the rest of the camp relied on scratchy blankets and outdoor fires to keep warm. They'd stay active and keep out of the wind, but sometimes all they had to combat the cold sea air was sheer force of will.

Quinn didn't mind the cold. Her numbing fingers and blue-tinged lips took her mind away from more unpleasant things. Back home, she liked to swim in the ocean when it was cold. It would shock her body and fill her with adrenaline, truly invigorating.

Sometimes Quinn wished for snow in Morocco, just to change the landscape up a bit.

Rachel wished for summer. She wanted sunshine and warmth and golden hues, and she battled the cold by picturing breezy springtime picnics in Central Park. It was halfway through December and Rachel hadn't taken off her wool coat in days.

She stood in front of one of the tiny ovens heating up soup and spooning rations onto flimsy metal trays when Mercedes appeared beside her. Mercedes grabbed a can opener wordlessly and starting twisting off the tops of tins of preserved ham.

"Thanks." Rachel murmured, shifting from side to side to stop herself from shivering.

Mercedes hummed. "I don't suppose you've heard?" she asked, glancing at Rachel with a raised eyebrow.

Rachel scrunched up her nose at the brown slop that Mercedes dumped out of the can. It would smell nicer when it was warm, but it was hardly discernible as ham. Rachel missed her dads' cooking. And fresh bread and strawberries.

"Heard what?" Rachel asked warily. "That Rommel finally withdrew from El Agheila? Yes, I have heard that."

Mercedes shook her head, tossing a couple empty tins into a bucket. She looked sullen and regretful. "60th Infantry is being moved to Tunisia in the new year." She explained, dumping beans from a battered can. "They're joining the II Corps. Everyone leaves on the first of January."

Rachel nodded absently for a moment. She scraped at the bottom of a tin of ham to get every last bit, and then realized what Mercedes had said and froze.

"Wait, 60th?" Rachel repeated urgently, gaze darting up to her friend, slightly panicked. Her fork fell out of her hand.

Mercedes removed a couple of trays from the heat, avoiding Rachel's eyes. "They couldn't stay here forever." She muttered despondently.

Rachel scalded herself on the stove and jumped backwards in surprise. The pain hadn't registered. She kept her frantic eyes on Mercedes, who opened and dumped cans into trays like an assembly line.

"Surely only the fit, right?" Rachel asked, searching for a loophole. "Nobody who needs medical attention?"

Mercedes put the can opener down and finally faced her friend. Her eyes were sad, but understanding. "You know they need everybody, Rachel." She reasoned. "Quinn can walk. Her arm is functional and she can shoot a gun, and that's what matters."

Rachel's breathing grew shallow. She knew it would come to this. She nodded silently and pressed her hands to her eyes, and then to Mercedes' shoulders in thanks. She loaded up her food cart and hurried to distribute the trays before the food got cold, glad that it didn't require speaking or smiling.

She smiled anyway, as best she could, because people needed it.

Quinn sat up in her cot, lock-jawed and steely-eyed, fifteen days away from leaving the comfort of her beach. Fifteen days left to live. No regrets. Her expression softened slightly when Rachel shuffled up with a tray of ham and beans.

Rachel's eyes were sad and longing. She gripped Quinn's forearm and it was obvious somebody had relayed the news to her.

"They just told us." Quinn murmured in explanation, accepting the plate of food.

Rachel swallowed and nodded. "So you have two weeks."

"And a day." Quinn added, meeting her eyes. Twenty-four hours could make all the difference. She knew that already.

Rachel brushed the blonde hair off Quinn's forehead, and it was in that moment that Quinn decided to act on whatever emotion she saw swirling in Rachel's warm brown eyes. She recognized it as affection, love, and she had two weeks to figure out what _kind_ of love it was.

Rachel hadn't moved. Her eyes roved over Quinn's stitches, visible now that the sling was gone, and she trailed a finger along the scarring on Quinn's arm.

"No stew tonight?" Quinn questioned, holding Rachel's gaze and pressing a fork into her beans.

Rachel shifted on her feet. "You seem to enjoy the ham better." She offered quietly as explanation.

Quinn's lips twitched. Rachel watched those steely eyes transform into the warm hazel ones she knew. She perched precariously on the edge of Quinn's cot and smoothed out her wrinkled skirt and coat.

"If I requested a candlelit, fine-dining experience of steak and eggs, would you provide that as well?" Quinn asked softly, eyes sparkling down at her ham. It wasn't particularly appetizing, but it was her favorite of the canned foods.

Little things like that made all the difference.

Rachel flushed and smiled and kept smoothing out her coat. "For you, Quinn Fabray, I may be able to find a way."

Quinn grinned down at her plate, beans in her mouth. She took several more bites so that the food wouldn't go cold and watched Rachel in her peripheral vision. Rachel was discreetly patting the sheets and the scratchy wool blanket over Quinn's legs.

Quinn swallowed loudly and raised an eyebrow, glad that she could move her face around now without pitching into a fit of excruciating pain. Her skin was tight and distorted and red and mottled, but not _painful_.

"I'm warm enough, Rachel." Quinn stated before Rachel could ask. Or sacrifice her coat or her own blanket or supper. Quinn smiled wryly at Rachel's feigned surprise and swallowed another mouthful of ham.

"Oh, I wasn't-" Rachel rested a hand on Quinn's knee and shook her head. "I mean, now that you've brought it up, are you certain you don't need an extra blanket? I'm sure I could-"

Quinn coughed a little on her ham, trying to shake her head. "We have furnaces. If anything, _you_ should take _my_ blanket."

Rachel rolled her eyes and ran a finger over the scratchy fabric covering Quinn's shin. She started picking at it and Quinn shook her leg to get her to stop.

"You won't have furnaces when you leave." Rachel pointed out sadly, probably unhelpfully.

The two weeks in Quinn's head were like a lifeline. She held onto them, and held onto Rachel's hand until brown eyes were looking into her own.

"We have fifteen days." Quinn said slowly, clearly, eyes blazing with emotion. Rachel swallowed and nodded, locked onto her gaze. "We should focus on that right now."

All Rachel could do was nod again.

Quinn licked her lips and a smile flickered across her face. "Now…will you please sing to me, Rachel?" she requested warmly. "Unless you have greater priorities."

Rachel's lips quirked up fondly. She tilted her head and watched Quinn eat her ham and sang "Summertime" lowly, and she was warm.

_One of these mornings_

_You're going to rise up singing_

_Then you'll spread your wings_

_And you'll take the sky_

~oooooooooooooo~

With fourteen days left, Quinn stood in the sunshine on the beach wearing long pants and two pairs of wooly socks and boots, but only her white button down shirt because Rachel was working on her arm. Tugging on it, twisting it, torturing it. Quinn just grit her teeth together and stared out at the waves.

Rachel was apologetic. "If we don't stretch it now, you'll have very limited movement in your left arm." She explained, slowly rotating Quinn's shoulder.

Quinn groaned lowly in response.

"Maybe you should've just removed it altogether." Quinn muttered, eyes flickering to Rachel's cheeks, pink from the cold. "It's the left one. It's hardly necessary."

Rachel's lips twitched, but she stayed focused on Quinn's shoulder. "You don't mean that." She countered knowingly. "I'm sure you're rather fond of all your limbs."

Rachel flexed Quinn's elbow and Quinn hummed painfully, clenching her eyes shut. "Nope. Nope." She shook her head. "I'm not liking this one very much at the moment."

It was painful, but she dug her boots into the sand and kept her chin held high because she'd be damned if she let anybody see her _cowering _away from a little physical therapy. She kept her jaw set and focused on Rachel's soft hands.

Rachel glanced at Quinn's eyes, shiny and bright because of the wind and as determined as ever. Her blonde hair was blowing in her face and her jaw was sharp, and she looked so much like a statue from her good side that Rachel stopped moving her arm for a moment.

Quinn's jaw went slack immediately and her sparkling gaze met Rachel's. "Are we finished?" she asked eagerly.

Rachel smiled regretfully and shook her head. She moved Quinn's arm straight up and her wool coat slipped, opening slightly at the buttons, and Quinn caught sight of the small, golden elephant pin on her uniform shirt.

"I like that." Quinn said, eyeing it while Rachel man-handled her arm.

Rachel looked down at herself like she wasn't sure what Quinn was talking out. And then she saw the pin and flushed and smiled.

"It's like what I drew for Noah on the ship." Quinn continued before Rachel could respond. "He's carrying around an elephant as well."

Quinn kind of wished she had an elephant to carry around. She could feel her cross resting lightly on her chest under her shirt.

Rachel pulled Quinn's arm out to the side. "My fathers gave it to me." She explained, smiling slightly. "They said it symbolizes good luck and wisdom and strength. And probably quite a few other things."

Quinn winced when Rachel pawed at her shoulder, but then tilted her head thoughtfully and watched Rachel's face. "It can be anything you need it to be." She mused.

Rachel smiled up at her. "Exactly."

Quinn thought about her fourteen days. "My parents gave me a cross when I was ten." She reached inside her shirt with her free hand and held up the faded gold chain for Rachel to see. "My father wore it in the Great War. He said it kept him safe."

Rachel lowered Quinn's arm slowly and clasped her elbow encouragingly. She met Quinn's eyes with a small smile. "That's nice. I'm sure they're hoping it keeps you safe as well."

Quinn kind of wanted to laugh. "I haven't spoken to them in three years." She said instead, managing a wry, painful chuckle.

Rachel's smile faded. She wondered if Quinn was about to confide in her, _finally_, and she let go of Quinn's arm and moved to stand directly in front of the other woman. Quinn shook her head immediately and seized Rachel's elbow to move her back.

"No, keep-don't-just keep doing what you were doing." Quinn urged stiltedly, waving her left arm for Rachel to take.

Rachel stared at her for a moment, but didn't argue. She grasped Quinn's shoulder softly and went back to rotating it, figuring it would be easier for Quinn to talk if they had something else to focus on. Quinn murmured her thanks.

"I told them…what I told you," Quinn said steadily, digging the toe of her boot into the sand. "And they prepared a suitcase and put me on a train with some money, and told me I was no longer a part of their family."

Rachel bit her tongue. She slowed her movements until she was just standing in the sand holding Quinn's arm with two warm hands and trailing her fingers over mottled, scarred skin.

Quinn side-eyed her like she realized Rachel had stopped. Rachel watched her with wide, sad eyes.

"So I went to the coast." Quinn continued, not protesting when Rachel's hand slipped into her own. "And I stretched out my money for almost two years and stayed at places along the beach. Or _on_ the beach."

Rachel squeezed her hand. "By yourself?" she asked softly, voice almost carried away by the wind.

Quinn nodded and met her gaze. "And then I realized that I was absolutely useless, and I had nothing to lose if I joined the WAAC to give my life some meaning." Quinn smiled a little hopelessly. "I joined the next day and was sent to Fort Des Moines a week later."

Rachel didn't know where to start.

Quinn watched her eyes dart around and her mouth open multiple times, only to close before any words escaped. But Rachel's hands stayed clasped around Quinn's and her eyes and breath and cheeks were warm.

"You're not useless." Rachel stated quietly once she found herself able to respond.

Quinn believed her. She had a purpose in this new place.

"I'm sorry that happened to you." Rachel murmured, fixing the collar on Quinn's shirt. "You didn't deserve that."

Quinn half-smiled at her. She believed everything Rachel said.

"Do…do your parents know you're over here?" Rachel asked gently a minute later.

Quinn got tired of standing and dropped down into the sand, tugging Rachel with her. She winced as she bent her left leg and then nodded to answer Rachel's question.

"I sent them a letter before I left, but they don't know where exactly I am so they can't reply." Quinn explained, letting Rachel trace the rough skin on her hand. "So they may…feel _differently_ now, but I don't know."

It was a hope Quinn was holding on to. It was what her cross meant to her. It was her elephant.

She really wanted to move on from the subject.

"I would be proud of you." Rachel assured softly, finding nothing else to say. "If I'd known you before, if I was your family, I'd be proud of you. You're quite brave."

Quinn's lips quirked up. She turned her head and met warm brown eyes, glad that Rachel was sitting on her right side. "Yeah?" she checked with a raised eyebrow.

Rachel smiled fully. "Yes." She brought Quinn's hand up and kissed it.

Quinn's eyes sparkled. Rachel scooted closer and took off her coat to drape it over both of their shoulders, and then huddled into Quinn's side. Quinn smelled like toast and smoke and canned ham and warmth. Rachel counted fourteen days in her mind.

~ooooooooooooo~

Quinn was released from the first-aid tent with thirteen days left. She was assigned to a bunk with Santana and seven other women, and it was far from quiet, so she preferred to avoid it for most of the day. Even if it meant stalking around a windy, winter beach or hiding near the nurses' furnaces.

Her woolen uniform jacket still hadn't been replaced, so she settled for two blue, itchy blankets and wrapped them around her shoulders to watch the sun set. She leaned back against a pile of sandbags and was joined by Rachel, Mercedes, Brittany, and Santana.

But they were quiet, so Quinn didn't mind.

She sat by Rachel, with no space in between, while Mercedes sat a few feet away and Brittany and Santana reclined in the sand in front of them. Quinn pulled up her blanket so it covered her cheek and smiled when Rachel squeezed her arm.

"I don't think Germany will be as nice as this place." Brittany mused, tracing stars in the sky with her fingers.

Rachel sighed quietly.

"This place isn't _nice_, Brittany." Mercedes drawled. "It's just safe. For now."

Brittany clasped Santana's hand and kept tracing the stars. "Well, I can't imagine Germany will be as _safe_ as this place, then."

"Of course it won't be." Santana muttered roughly.

Quinn was confused. She narrowed her eyes and turned her head, eyes roving over Rachel's face. "Are you going to Germany?" she whispered, clutching Rachel's arm and leaning forward anxiously. It felt like her stomach dropped. She knew _she'd_ been going back to combat in Tunis, but never considered that Rachel would be sent right back to a warzone as well.

The warzone of all warzones.

Rachel shut her eyes at the warm breath on her cheek. She nodded slightly and heard Quinn's head knock backwards against the sand bags.

"When?" Quinn whispered to the stars.

Rachel leaned her head against Quinn's shoulder. The blanket was itchy on her face, but Quinn wrapped an arm around her waist and played with her coat buttons, so it was alright.

"January second." Rachel replied softly.

Brittany sat up in the sand and looked back at Quinn. "We don't know where in Germany yet, or how…_dangerous_?" she squinted her eyes like she was looking for the right word.

"Unstable. Volatile." Santana supplied, expressionless. "They won't know of the circumstances until they get there."

Quinn pressed her boot angrily through the sand like a shovel. Rachel watched the movement and reached out and held Quinn's knee to get her to stop.

"We'll all be together." Mercedes remarked, looking for some light. "The three of us, I mean. And Quinn and San, you'll be together. We'll make it home."

Rachel nodded immediately. Her first instinct was optimism. She was frightened of what was to come, but she could only imagine the best scenarios.

Quinn could only see the worst. She thumped her head backwards against the sandbags again to clear her mind. Rachel reached up a hand and settled it against the back of Quinn's head, resting on tangled blonde hair.

"Stop doing that." She chided. "You'll hurt yourself."

Quinn almost snorted. Mercedes looked over at them and laughed.

"You know, if we are all separated in the new year, I'll make sure we are reunited when the war ends." Mercedes proclaimed with a smile, gesturing at everybody around her. "It could be a year or two or five or ten, but I will find you all. I will come knocking on your doors at home and you'll think I'm mad and maybe you won't recognize me at first, but then you will, and we will laugh."

Santana tilted her head back in the sand and flailed an arm behind her until it connected with Mercedes' leg. "Promise?" she asked with a smirk.

Mercedes nodded sagely. "I will not rest until it happens."

"That sounds frightening." Brittany mused.

"Mercedes has always been rather scary." Rachel agreed with a nod. She smiled at Mercedes' scoff and huddled against Quinn to hide herself from her friend's gaze.

It was quiet while the sun dropped in the sky. When it hit the water, Santana, Brittany, and Mercedes returned to their bunks, but Quinn claimed dusk was her favorite time of day, so Rachel stayed with her in the sand.

Quinn also said sunrise and the middle of the night were her favorite times of day, but Rachel didn't argue. She listened to the waves and Quinn's even breathing.

"I'm not sure when Hanukah was," Quinn said abruptly, unwinding her arm from Rachel's waist to rummage through her jacket pockets. "And I don't know if it's over, but I made you something."

The only thing Quinn knew about the date was that she had thirteen days left.

Rachel's eyes lit up as Quinn pulled a square of paper from her pocket. It was rumpled, but intact, and she knew Hanukah had ended a few days ago, but that seemed unimportant. Quinn held out the paper, which was about the size of Rachel's hand, and licked her lips.

"It's similar to the one I gave Noah." She explained softly. "It's not…_extraordinary_, by any means, but it's something to hold onto."

It was a sketch of an elephant. Quinn had taken twice as long to do Rachel's elephant's eyes than she had Noah's, and she gave the elephant bigger ears to make Rachel smile and a serene expression because Rachel could always use something to calm her down.

Tears pricked Rachel's eyes as she stared at it. She flipped it over and examined the black ink on the back.

_Soon will be clear, my dear, while sun showers are here._

Quinn had signed it with her name.

Rachel pressed a hand against her eyes. She was smiling, but she could feel tears rolling down her cheeks, and she clutched the drawing to her heart and let Quinn pull her head against the itchy, blue blanket.

"Do you like it?" Quinn asked, half-smiling, running a hand through Rachel's dark hair.

Rachel nodded immediately and gave a watery chuckle and Quinn felt it rumble in her chest.

"You mean something, Quinn." Rachel said impulsively, pulling back from Quinn's chest and wiping at her eyes. She waited until she had Quinn's gaze. "Your life has meaning. Things like this, fighting out here, protecting your friends, those all have meaning."

Quinn swallowed. Rachel's eyes were earnest and shiny and glowing in the dim light of dusk, and Quinn pictured her thirteen days and how she wanted to spend them.

"But do I mean something to _you_?" Quinn asked before she could stop herself. Her voice was rough, but clear. Rachel's smile wavered in confusion and Quinn continued before she could interrupt. "Something more than…_friends_, I mean. Do I mean something to you?"

Rachel's smile slowly faded as realization dawned. Her heart hammered against her chest. She couldn't look away from those hazel eyes.

Quinn remembered how brave Rachel always said she was, so she took another step.

"Because I think I do." Quinn suggested lowly, holding Rachel's gaze. "I can see it in your eyes and in the things you do. You should stop ignoring it, or pretending you don't realize what it is, because we only have thirteen days left, Rachel."

Quinn felt completely calm, but energized, like she could run straight into the ocean and feel no pain at all. That was _almost_ what she was doing. She figured it was adrenaline.

Rachel still didn't say anything. She looked frozen. Quinn leaned further forward and brushed the dark hair out of Rachel's eyes.

"I know I mean something to you." Quinn said slowly, clearly, funneling everything she was feeling into her eyes. She hoped Rachel could see it.

Rachel's head was a mess. All she could see were Quinn's eyes, and she didn't quite understand why it felt like a load of weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Like her heart was lighter.

Quinn's breath was warm and her face was pink, and the sand was cool on Rachel's hands and the sandbags were hard against her back.

And Quinn was always right, so Rachel leaned forward and kissed her on her cool, chapped lips, and she felt like home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Sun Showers: Chapter 5**

It was like being caught in an undertow. Pulled in one direction by this unstoppable force and fighting to go the other way, the _right_ way, guided by the heart and mind. An inescapable riptide.

Quinn's lips were salty and cool and completely sure, and Rachel threaded her fingers through tangled blonde hair and pushed Quinn back against the sandbags. They fought the current for a moment.

"I was caught in a riptide once." Quinn whispered later that night, arms wrapped around Rachel and lips pressed to her dark hair. They had moved inside, away from the cold ocean wind.

Rachel hummed tiredly and squeezed Quinn's arm.

"It was the closest I've come to dying before I came out here." Quinn remembered clearly. She'd swam parallel to the shore for what felt like hours before the current stopped dragging her along. Sunburnt and suffering from muscle exhaustion, she'd gone right back in the water the next day.

"I'm glad you were alright." Rachel murmured.

The dim lamp next to the furnace made Quinn's face glow orange, and Rachel could see a contented smile playing on her lips.

It was reassuring that Quinn seemed always in control.

"I'm not sure what I'm doing." Rachel confessed quietly, blinking her eyes to keep them open. She could still taste Quinn on her lips. Her heart was still hammering away and the excited goosebumps on her arms still hadn't faded.

Quinn squeezed around her waist. "You're sitting with me on the floor by the furnace to keep me warm."

Rachel laughed lightly. "That's not what I meant."

"You're playing with my fingers and trying not to fall asleep." Quinn offered reasonably. She pointed up at one of the hospital cots. "You're thinking about how loudly that patient is snoring and you're tapping your toes because your foot has gone numb. That's what you're doing."

Rachel heard the smile in Quinn's voice. She twisted to see her face, orange by the light and scarred, but her hazel eyes sparkled.

"I think I've been falling in love with you." Rachel admitted softly, smiling at the little breath of air Quinn let out. "I don't know how you did that. I shouldn't be doing that."

Quinn's heart swelled. She pulled the blanket tighter around hers and Rachel's shoulders. "Well, that's what we're doing. Figuring it out." She offered quietly. "Your heart does what it wants."

"We don't have time for something like this." Rachel argued half-heartedly. She allowed her head to loll sideways against Quinn's shoulder.

"We have eleven days, and then the rest of our lives." Quinn countered.

She was building herself up. Her heart and her mind and her expectations, and she wouldn't accept failure. Failure to make it home or protect her friends or be with Rachel. That would be unacceptable.

Rachel sighed loudly. Her body relaxed and her eyes closed and she was content because Quinn seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

"Would you like me to sing for you?" she mumbled into Quinn's shoulder.

Quinn laughed silently and Rachel frowned in protest at her head being jostled.

"You can't sing when you're half-asleep, Rachel." Quinn whispered affectionately, brushing the hair out of Rachel's eyes.

"I…I can always sing." Rachel managed to get out.

Quinn smiled. "You won't remember the words."

She didn't get a response to that, and she listened as Rachel's breathing grew deep. Quinn hummed against Rachel's head to lull herself to sleep. She had eleven days in her mind.

_The moon above _

_Is yours and mind_

_The right to fall in love_

_Is yours and mine_

~ooooooooooooo~

Day ten brought another kiss, standing this time, with Quinn gripping the back of Rachel's neck while they were behind a curtain in the first-aid tent. For once, Quinn's lips were warm, and she still tasted salty like the sea. Rachel went about the rest of her duties with a happy glow around her heart.

On day nine, Rachel woke up early and crept into Quinn's tent to wake her and watch the sun rise. There was another kiss, sitting on the cold sand and shielded by sandbags like distant birds on the beach.

They watched the sun set together in the same place on day eight.

And then day seven was Christmas Eve. Quinn wore a pair of Rachel's wool socks and ran her hands over Rachel's bare skin for the first time. She tickled her soft abdomen and kissed her neck, and Rachel trailed her fingers over Quinn's scarred cheek and told her that she was beautiful.

Christmas was day six.

There were fires on the beach and the mood was jovial, despite the cold and the impending departures. Rachel sat in a small ring with her hands over the flames, sandwiched between Quinn and Mercedes and across from Santana and Brittany. They had thermal cans of pork and beans and stew with crackers and cocoa, and Brittany hummed Winter Wonderland against Santana's shoulder.

It still hadn't snowed, but Quinn wasn't too disappointed. She offered Rachel a sip of her cocoa and smiled when Rachel kissed her cheek.

"I'd prefer a turkey." Mercedes stated to nobody in particular. "A nice, roasted twenty-four pound turkey like my mother does. Or a pot roast. With pumpkin pie for dessert."

Santana waved around an empty tin. "Really? Because I could eat canned ham _forever_." She drawled.

Brittany scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

Quinn wondered if she'd ever seen a twenty-four pound turkey.

"That's rather large." Rachel commented with a smile. She missed apple pie the most. And her warm little living room in New York. And her dads, of course.

"I have a big family." Mercedes said simply, stacking a few empty tins and knocking them into the fire pit.

Quinn huddled closer to Rachel against a gust of cold wind. "I make the best pumpkin pie." She said quietly. Proudly. Rachel smiled. "My mother taught me how. I'll make you one when we get home, Mercedes."

Rachel let go of the blanket around her shoulders for a second and poked Quinn in the ribs. Quinn turned and looked at her, smile on her lips, flames dancing in her hazel eyes.

"And I'll make you an apple pie, Rachel." She whispered, leaning in closer so that only Rachel could hear. "And we'll eat it together, and it will be the best you've ever had."

Rachel bit her lip and nodded, smiling down at her lap.

Quinn watched her for a moment. "Are you warm enough?" she asked quietly. Rachel was a small ball of wool and blankets with red cheeks and dark hair sticking out the top. Quinn smoothed an unruly lock down fondly.

Rachel met her eyes and nodded again. "Perfect."

Brittany shuffled to her knees on the other side of the fire, and Santana gripped the back of her coat before she could pitch forward into the flames. That would be exactly what they needed at the moment.

"I got you all presents!" Brittany proclaimed, retrieving something from her pocket and struggling against Santana's grip.

Rachel winced because Brittany could be pulling anything out of there. Insects, food, sand…Rachel shared a dubious look with Quinn and then laughed against Quinn's shoulder. Brittany opened her palm to reveal a handful of shells.

She held one up so that it was illuminated by the fire and looked at Mercedes. "Yours is the yellow one, Mercedes, because it reminds me of the sun and optimism like you do. And also pumpkin pie."

Mercedes looked awed. She gingerly took the shell from Brittany's fingers and examined it while Brittany moved onto the next one, smile wide.

"I got Santana the biggest one because she's-well-"

"Britt, don't-" Santana interrupted, reaching out for Brittany's arm.

Brittany ignored her. "She's the biggest in my heart right now, I guess." She turned to Santana and held out a shell about the size of her palm. "So you get the big one."

Quinn noted that Santana's eyes were softer than usual, her shoulders less defensive.

"This one is for Rachel." Brittany continued, reaching around the fire to hand Rachel a rosy pink shell. "It looks soft and warm, like Rachel. And it's the same color as your cheeks now, so that's good."

Rachel awwed and pressed the shell against her heart, thanking Brittany quietly. Quinn heard her sniffle and took her free hand, pleasantly surprised at how warm it was. She squeezed it reassuringly.

"And last, but not least, for Quinn." Brittany held the last shell out with a flourish, blue eyes and teeth lit by the fire. "It's big and it has a dent in it, but it's really smooth and beautiful, I think. And I stepped on it twice and it still hasn't broken. It reminds me of you."

Quinn's eyes roved over the shell. It _was_ beautiful. She held it in her fist and thanked Brittany, and then let Rachel pry her fingers open to get a better look at it. Quinn watched as Rachel held it next to her own pink shell, brown eyes focused and contemplative. And then Rachel's lips quirked and Quinn smiled.

Mercedes got up to check on a few patients and Brittany leaned into Santana's side, quietly carrying on a private conversation.

"I have something for you as well." Rachel finally whispered, looking back up at Quinn.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. Rachel unbuttoned the first few buttons of her coat and reached inside to her shirt collar. Her hand emerged with the small golden elephant pin her dads had given her.

Quinn inhaled sharply. "Rachel-"

Rachel smiled and pressed a finger to Quinn's lips. "No, wait, please." She requested.

Quinn nodded slightly, lips still parted.

"You gave me an elephant to keep me safe, for luck and wisdom and power and courage, and just to remind me that there's somebody out there who needs me to come home." Rachel explained softly, watching Quinn's bright eyes. "And I need to do the same for you, so I want you to have this and think of me and come home to me. And I'm sure my dads would approve."

Quinn swallowed thickly.

"And I _know_ they'll see this pin again, Quinn." Rachel continued resolutely, daring Quinn to contradict her. "You'll be wearing it when you knock on the door and meet them for the first time."

Rachel brushed blonde hair away while Quinn wiped surreptitiously at her eyes. She took Quinn's nodding to mean that she was accepting the gift, so she pushed aside Quinn's jacket and gently attached the pin to her shirt collar. Quinn looked down at it fondly, blurry and watery, and she caught Rachel's hand before it could go anywhere.

"I love you." She murmured, barely audible over the waves.

Rachel smiled and leaned forward and kissed her quickly, nose pressing into Quinn's cheek. "I love you too. Merry Christmas."

Quinn bunched up her sleeve and wiped at her nose and her eyes. "This feels like the best Christmas of my life, and that's just not right." She remarked with a short laugh.

Rachel smiled and leaned into her side. "But it _is_ right. All is right. It's about who you're with, not what's going to happen tomorrow."

Quinn was being pulled apart by the tide. She didn't know how she'd be able to let this woman go in five days. She focused on the cross on her chest and the pin on her collar and Rachel at her side, and pictured herself knocking on Rachel's door at the end of the war.

She could either live in the moment or in the far future. Everything between that was just messy filler she'd wade through to get home again. And she'd do it, because she was strong, like that shell.

And Rachel would be waiting for her.

~oooooooooooooo~

Port Lyautey was loud on day three, but its occupants were the quietest they'd ever been. There were trucks moving in and being loaded and planes flying overhead and soldiers running drills along the water's edge as a large segment of the camp was dismantled.

Rachel found herself doing a lot of ironing. Uniforms were being resorted and supplies redistributed in preparation for departure. The first-aid tent taught their patients how to splint their own fingers and bandage their own wounds in case they found themselves without medical assistance on the way to Tunis.

Rachel checked Quinn's shoulder every day, pleased to find that it was fully functional and mostly painless. It looked _awful,_ and Rachel suspected it hurt a little more than Quinn let on, but it was ready for combat.

Quinn found more pants. She walked around in her neatly clipped uniform, never rolling up her sleeves or loosening her tie or unbuttoning her shirt, and she completed any task given to her by her director. Sort rations, load the trucks, work on communication.

Right now, she stood in the sun with two crates of supplies and five haversacks at her feet. She was packing them, having a bit of difficulty because her fingers were going numb and the canvas straps weren't the most cooperative or user-friendly.

Rachel approached slowly. She'd seen Quinn hustling about all day, finally in her full uniform again, blonde hair pinned back and under control. She looked strong and confident. A person in charge.

"There should not be such a thing as canned bread." Quinn remarked, catching the small, black lace-up shoes approaching out of the corner of her eye.

Rachel laughed wryly. She placed a hand lightly on the small of Quinn's back and then moved around to the other side of the haversacks and set her hands on her hips.

"Can I help?" She questioned hopefully, eyeing Quinn's flushed face and the stiff movement of her fingers.

Quinn straightened up and stretched her back, staring disdainfully at the can of hard bread in her hand.

"Tell me why this exists." She requested, smiling slightly and showing Rachel the tin. "This shouldn't exist. Bread doesn't belong in cans."

Rachel chuckled. "Quinn."

Quinn glanced around for something that Rachel could do. She grabbed five pairs of socks out of one of the crates and tossed them in Rachel's direction, laughing at the surprised squeak she received. "Those go on top of the hard bread, please. One in each pack."

Rachel frowned. "You only get one pair of extra socks?"

Quinn stared at her. Rachel's frown turned into a sad, sympathetic pout when Quinn didn't say anything, so Quinn took a step closer to her.

"I found pants, Rachel." She whispered conspiratorially. "We'll surely be able to scrounge up socks if we need them." She winked, and Rachel smiled sadly.

"You'll be taking ham, right? Because it's your favorite." Rachel asked quietly, carefully folding the socks. "Do you know if they have enough? Surely it's not all stew, right?"

Quinn pressed her lips together to suppress her smile. "I'll have ham." She assured. She knew she'd end up with stew because there was more of it, but if there was anything she could say to make Rachel more comfortable, she would say it.

Rachel nodded and fell silent. She went around each haversack and put a pair of socks into the slot over the bread and patted them down carefully. She didn't want _anybody _losing their socks. Or their rock bread.

She finished with the socks and then stood next to Quinn and took hold of her cold hands. Quinn glanced around to make sure nobody was watching too closely.

"And you have to stay warm." Rachel insisted, squeezing Quinn's numbing fingers and then lifting them up to blow on them.

Quinn tilted her head. "Do you know anybody in the unit you're with? Anyone who's not a nurse?"

Rachel's frowned at the sudden subject change, and her gaze drifted to the sky in thought before returning to Quinn's. "The Navy unit we're with- I mean- I'm friends with one gentleman. But only because I heard him singing once and had to join in."

Quinn smiled softly. "What's his name?"

Rachel narrowed her eyes. "Jesse St. James."

Quinn nodded, rolling the name around in her head. She'd look out for it. "Will Jesse St. James take care of you if I ask him to?"

A lump grew in Rachel's throat at the expression on Quinn's face. All she could do was nod. Jesse was a good guy.

Quinn nodded as well. "Good." She whispered.

She let Rachel blow on her fingers some more before gesturing wordlessly to the cans at her feet. Rachel kissed her cheek quickly and ran a hand down her jacket lapel, and then went back to helping Quinn pack haversacks with canned hard bread.

~ooooooooooooo~

Rachel found Santana later in the day, right as the sun was starting to set. She was sitting in a chair outside the first-aid tent and sorting blankets into piles, clipped and clean as when Rachel had first seen her a month ago. Rachel sat in the chair next to her and silently grabbed a blanket to fold.

The corner of Santana's mouth quirked up. "Hey, Berry."

"_Nurse_ Berry." Rachel mumbled. "Or Rachel."

Santana rolled her eyes.

Rachel cleared her throat. Her blanket had a large brown stain on it, which she figured was blood, and she held it up to show Santana.

Santana waved her away. "Keep folding. They'll use it. It's been washed."

Rachel scrunched up her nose and added the blanket to the top of the pile. Whoever got to use that blanket next would probably wonder what happened to its previous owner. That wouldn't be pleasant.

"Where's Brittany?" Rachel asked to rid her mind of gruesome images.

"She's sewing somebody's finger back on." Santana stated evenly.

Rachel grimaced again.

"He shut it in a truck door, though." Santana continued with a shrug. "It's not a…_combat_ injury."

That provided some relief. That was the kind of thing that could happen at home, right outside Rachel's house on a random New York street. It was actually the kind of thing she'd be likely to do herself.

"The man won't have to leave for at least a couple weeks." Santana added, glancing meaningfully at Rachel.

Rachel's eyes widened as realization dawned. "Do you-you think he did that purposely?" she whispered loudly.

Santana shook her head immediately. "I don't know, Berry." She focused on her blanket. "I don't know. But he didn't really have a reason to be getting in the truck."

Rachel sat back in her chair and frowned, focusing on folding her blankets. She couldn't see Quinn doing something like that. Quinn would see it as weakness, and that wasn't allowed. She'd be the kind of person to lose an arm and then drag herself across the battlefield to finish the fight.

Rachel turned abruptly to face Santana, setting her blanket on her knees and patting it down. Santana watched her out of the corner of her eye.

"Will you look after her?" Rachel asked, unable to keep the nervous tremor from her voice.

Santana stopped folding and faced her fully, expressionless.

"_Quinn_. You'll look after Quinn, right?" Rachel clarified. Santana's brown eyes softened slightly. "I just-I know her shoulder hurts, but she won't tell anybody about it. And she likes to give away her food if she thinks somebody needs it more."

Rachel's voice shook. "If anything happens, I just-I need to know that you'll be there to hold her hand. _Please_, Santana. I know she'll do the same for you."

Santana's gaze dropped to Rachel's collar, where the elephant was no longer pinned.

"I know you've known her longer," Rachel continued, anxious because Santana wasn't saying anything, "but, I-I need-I don't…Just _please_ take care of each other."

Rachel clasped her hands on her lap, staring pleadingly at Santana. She just needed a bit of reassurance.

Santana nodded shortly and met Rachel's eyes again. "You do the same for Brittany. And Mercedes." She requested firmly. "We're all coming home, Berry."

Rachel sighed heavily in relief, nodding earnestly. _Of course_ she'd look out for Mercedes and Brittany.

Santana's lips twitched. "You know Quinn asked Mercedes to do the same thing for you. To look after you."

Rachel tilted her head, smiling slightly.

"And she asked our director to get a message to an _Ensign St. James_." Santana laughed wryly. "I don't know who that is, but we've got more people looking out for us than most. We should be thankful."

Rachel nodded softly. "Thank you." She murmured.

Santana gave her something that could be interpreted as a smile, and Rachel folded her last blanket.

~oooooooooooooo~

December 31st was as hectic as November 8th, when Rachel and Quinn had first arrived at Port Lyautey. The camp was buzzing and loud, and Quinn found herself struggling to block out all the noise. She already missed the sound of the waves.

Rachel's ears always managed to pick up the rumbling of the large green transport trucks, which were lined up at the edge of the beach and ready to depart before dawn of the next day.

The ships had reappeared on the water and boats scattered the shore. Quinn would be going by land, Rachel by sea. One to Tunisia, one to Nazi Germany. Both routes were bleak.

There was no free time on the last day of the year. Rachel focused on her patients and Quinn built up her walls, and they didn't see each other until Quinn crept into the first-aid tent after the sun had gone down.

She was down to hours now. Six hours.

Rachel met her, and they wordlessly climbed into an empty bed. It was a tight fit, but Quinn wrapped Rachel in her arms so they were almost like a single person, and then pulled the blanket up to their shoulders.

Somebody was shaking. Maybe both.

Rachel watched Quinn's jaw clench. Her nose was only an inch away from Rachel's, breathing the same air. Quinn's breath came out in short puffs.

"Don't be angry, honey." Rachel requested softly, tears already forming in her eyes.

Quinn shut her eyes and shook her head shortly.

Rachel extracted a hand from under the blanket and pressed it to Quinn's scarred cheek. Quinn swallowed thickly.

"It's okay to cry if you need to." Rachel whispered, tracing the mottled skin with her thumb.

Quinn choked out a laugh, eyes still shut tight. "Not unless my arm's falling off."

Her voice was strained and watery, and Rachel sighed and ran her hand soothingly through blonde hair. Quinn actually felt like losing an arm would be less painful than saying goodbye in six hours. She couldn't think of anything that would be _more_ painful than what they were going to have to do. Except never being able to say hello again.

"Quinn." Rachel murmured. Her voice cracked before she could say anything else, and Quinn finally opened her eyes and breathed deeply and let the tears flow quietly down her cheeks, because that was exactly what Rachel was doing.

"You saved my arm. I'll put it to good use." Quinn assured, letting a watery smile play on her lips.

Rachel choked a laugh. "Try to keep it this time, please."

Quinn nodded and wiped at her eyes and then at Rachel's cheeks. "This is exactly where I'd like to be." She stated, voice steady now. "At this moment and for the rest of our lives, looking at you and lying with you. It's exactly where I want to be."

Rachel smiled. Her insides were swirly and jumpy and her nose was running, but she let herself relax slightly, aware that she had six whole hours to spend with Quinn before she had to go. Lost in the moment.

"Just remember this." Quinn whispered, unblinking. "If you're ever scared or alone or stuck, or…lost or miserable, even if you're just eating a particularly bad batch of canned bread, remember this moment and everything will be okay. And sing _Sun Showers_, like you sing it to me. I'll be listening even if I'm not with you."

Quinn's lips were quirked up and her eyes were earnest, and Rachel bit her cheek and nodded because it was all she could do.

"I'll knock on your door when we're home, Rachel." Quinn continued softly. "The plane will land and I will put on my prettiest dress and I'll come to New York and I'll knock on your door. And you'll look beautiful with a bow in your hair, and I'll smell fresh bread baking inside, and you will have the biggest smile on your face when I finally get to hold you again."

Rachel's throat closed up and her heart swelled, and she just couldn't suppress the smile on her face.

"And we'll have a picnic in Central Park with a basket full of apple pie and a checkered blanket." Rachel added quietly, running a hand under the hem of Quinn's shirt and tracing the smooth skin of her back. "And we'll see a musical and you'll take me to the beach, and we'll fall asleep together when we get home."

Quinn chuckled and it rumbled through Rachel's body. "I love you, Rachel Berry."

Rachel tapped the elephant pin on Quinn's collar. "I love you too, Quinn." Her voice was steady and the tears had stopped because she was warm and safe in Quinn's arms and she still had five hours.

And she could see Quinn standing on her door step and knocking on her big red door, and she held onto that image.

"You're beautiful and brave." Rachel whispered, letting her eyes close.

Quinn sighed contentedly and pulled her closer so that their noses brushed together. "Let's sleep, sweetheart." She murmured.

Rachel nodded.

Quinn knew the riptide was winning. But she'd never stop fighting it.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Warning for combat scenes. Very odd to write.

**Sun Showers: Chapter 6**

Quinn woke up before dawn the next day and allowed herself exactly one minute to watch Rachel sleep. To just be in her presence, because time had run out. She memorized the slight part of Rachel's lips and the contented, peaceful smile playing on her face in the golden lamp light, and she traced her cheekbones and eyebrows and nose before pressing a kiss into her soft, mussed hair.

She smelled like smoke and flowers, and Quinn breathed it in and watched the rise and fall of Rachel's chest, clenching her own jaw because it would take all the willpower in the world to walk away from this.

And then Quinn kissed Rachel's lips and held it for as long as she could before her eyes started to burn. She couldn't say anything because her throat had closed up, but she knew Rachel knew everything that she would say, anyway.

Like that Quinn loved her, and this wasn't goodbye, and to keep warm and safe and eat and think about apple pie.

Quinn stood straight up. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath and walked away, quickly and steadily making her way out of the first-aid tent.

Her boots sunk in the sand and she kept her chin up, breathing sharply through her nose and grinding her teeth to quell whatever it was inside her that made her feel like running into the sea and crying.

She met Santana with part of their unit at their assigned truck, thankful for the darkness and for the fact that Santana seemed just as unwilling or unable to talk as Quinn.

"Third Officer Quinn Fabray." The director called out from the back of the truck.

Quinn stepped forward. She was pressed and clipped and clean and motivated, _oh so_ motivated now, and she climbed into the truck that would take her away from her home of two months.

Away from the girl she loved.

She thought of Sun Showers.

~oooooooooooooo~

Rachel knew Quinn was gone before she even opened her eyes. The warmth was gone from her side, and the comforting smell of salt water and canned ham and _Quinn_ only remained in traces on the pillow case. Rachel rolled over and pressed her face into the pillow and dug her fingers into the flimsy mattress and let herself cry.

It felt surreal, and Rachel stayed like that, sniffling into the pillowcase, eyes shut tightly, until she no longer felt incredibly off-balance. Like if she'd tried to stand up, she would've pitched forward because the world had shifted while she'd been asleep.

_Her_ world had shifted.

Quinn had once told her about an earthquake in San Marcos which destroyed her junior high school when she was thirteen. The gym had collapsed in on itself, and it was like the metal hooops and shiny basketball court and wooden bleachers had never existed in the first place.

Thankfully, it had been the weekend, so nobody was harmed, and a bigger and better school was built in its place.

Quinn said that having the world shift around you wasn't always bad.

Rachel bit into the pillow and shut her eyes tightly and gathered herself. She held her breath and then threw back the covers and slid out of bed in one fluid motion, chin held high, because that's what Quinn would do.

She felt for the elephant sketch in her front pocket, just to be sure it was still there.

"Rachel."

Brittany's voice was soft, and when she peeked around the curtain her eyes were red-rimmed, but purposeful. Rachel wiped off her face and buttoned up her coat, smiling weakly at the other nurse.

"The officer whose finger I re-attached after he shut it in the door," Brittany started, waiting for Rachel's nod of recognition. "I think it's infected."

Rachel swallowed. Of course it was. She clicked herself back into nurse gear and straightened her cap and shifted everything else from her mind.

"How badly?" she questioned softly, following Brittany through the curtain and down the row of beds to their rudimentary pharmacy.

"I've tried sulfa powder, but it's spreading." Brittany explained, rolling up the cuffs of her sleeves. "I don't know how soon we'll have more Penicillin, so…possibly, we could take off his hand?"

Rachel grimaced at the thought. She dug through the crates of vials and gauze and metal instruments while Brittany watched. They were running low on everything, with only a day left at the camp.

Brittany shuffled closer, wringing her hands. "I suppose…she left without waking you up?" she asked quietly, after a minute of nothing but clinking glass and Rachel's harried grumbling.

Rachel's hand closed tightly around a bottle. She shook her head shortly.

"We said goodbye this morning." Brittany murmured. "Santana-"

"Brittany, Nurse Pierce, _please_." Rachel interrupted sharply, whirling around with a stack of gauze in her hands. She softened her voice at Brittany's expression. "Please. If I'm expected to focus on anything at all, I'd prefer we not speak about that."

Brittany sighed heavily, nodding slightly.

Rachel watched her, remembering what Santana said. "Happy new year, Brittany." She murmured, allowing her lips to quirk up. "Quinn said we should celebrate by swimming in the ocean and indulging in ham."

Brittany smiled warily. "That doesn't sound very pleasant."

Rachel laughed. Quinn could still make her laugh, even when they weren't in the same place.

She held onto that, and the warm feeling in her heart, and glanced down at the gauze she was holding. "Now let's take off this man's hand." She stated calmly. "Because _that's_ what we need to do right now."

There were no thoughts of apple pie or checkered blankets or elephants on her mind. Rachel was there to help people, and all of those people had somebody who loved them at home, and she'd do whatever she could to return them safely.

Because there was an awful, hammering fear in her head that nobody would do the same for Quinn.

~ooooooooooooo~

The convoy made it out of Morocco in less than twenty-four hours. It drove through the night into Algeria, rumbling over the rough terrain and stopping for nothing. Quinn's back ached from sitting in the truck for so long, and her fingers were stiff and her knees kept popping, barely audible over the engine and the rest of her unit.

Santana twisted her back for the tenth time, pushing into Quinn's side, and Quinn winced at the cracking sound.

"Don't do that." She muttered, knocking her friend with her shoulder and then quickly moving her feet when the truck jolted forward.

"I need to walk around." Santana whispered sharply. "I feel elderly."

Quinn laughed wryly. "We're too old for this, Lopez."

Santana rolled her eyes.

The truck jolted to a stop again and the engines went quiet, and Quinn clutched her gun and experienced a sudden rush of adrenaline before her director stood up with a placating hand.

"We are on the bank of a river." She proclaimed loudly, face lit by the sunlight peeking through the canvas of the truck. "You will disembark to cross, and then continue on foot for another twelve miles before meeting up with the transport."

Quinn listened intently. Santana's knee bounced, obviously pleased to leave the vehicle.

"Let's move." The director instructed simply, spinning on her heel and heading to the back of the truck.

The canvas doors were peeled open and Quinn squinted against the light, blinded for a moment, before standing up and moving to the exit with twenty other women.

It was loud outside, and grassy, with clusters of tall weeds and wildflowers, which reminded her of Rachel.

"Secure your packs." An officer from an Army unit in another truck yelled. "Do not fall in. Do not let the water reach your torso. Hold your weapons above your heads."

Quinn followed the line of soldiers down the bank. Her nose was running already, and her lips were cold, like always, and she knew that this would be extremely unpleasant with the first touch of her boot to the cold water.

"This should be old hat for you, Quinn." Santana stated tightly, up to her calves in the water already. "Gallivanting around in cold water."

Quinn smiled slightly when she remembered how she'd told Rachel to celebrate the new year, and then she gasped when the water reached her knees. She strode forward without stopping, following Santana's wake, and found that the deepest part of the river came up to about mid-thigh.

She had at least seven layers of clothing on, but her legs still tingled with near numbness, and she fought every instinct she had to lower her gun from above her head.

Some of the other soldiers weren't taking the icy water as well as she was.

Santana was doing well, though, swearing under her breath and sloshing aggressively through the water like it had personally victimized her.

Quinn bit her tongue to keep her teeth from chattering together when they reached the far bank of the river. She climbed up the small incline and lowered her gun and squeezed out all the water she could from the bottom of her pants.

"We should dry quickly, right?" Santana wondered, eyeing the sun, high in the sky. Her hands shook and she bounced in place to keep moving.

Quinn nodded. She was glad for all of their layers of insulation. And that they'd done this in the middle of the day.

"Get rid of the water, pull out your rations, and eat while you walk." The same Army officer instructed loudly, striding through the crowd of soldiers climbing up the bank. "We have no time to waste."

Quinn did as she was told. She pulled out a can of beans, deciding to save the ham for another time, when she _really_ needed something positive, and she opened the top and had her fork in before she even started walking.

"Oh, that's not good." Santana muttered sympathetically, twisting around and looking at something behind them.

Quinn turned as well, mid-swallow, mid-stride, and saw that a soldier had fallen in, or purposely submerged himself up to his neck. His uniform was soaked through, but he walked forward at the same pace as everybody else, chin held high, breathing rather heavily.

Quinn fell out of whatever primitive "line" she was supposed to be in, and dropped back next to him.

She side-eyed his hands, wondering why he wasn't eating.

"Did you trip?" she asked bluntly because she didn't know what else to say.

The guy choked a laugh and nodded, letting his teeth chatter together for a moment, but he said nothing.

Quinn frowned. "I'm sure you'll let your superior know if you don't feel well?"

Again, the soldier nodded. His eyes flickered briefly over the scars on Quinn's face, but returned her gaze steadily. "I'm-I-I have so-so many layers of clothes on I can-I can barely feel it." He stuttered out, half-smiling.

"You should eat." Quinn suggested, watching the guy's scruffy, shaky jaw. "You'll need all the energy you can get."

He shrugged. "I lost a f-few cans."

Quinn glanced down at her own can. She'd finished half her beans, and she impulsively handed out her tin for this stranger. He looked down at it and raised his eyebrows.

"I'd rather have ham." She said with a straight face. "And you're an icicle…I'm Fabray. Third Officer Quinn Fabray."

The guy eyed her curiously, waiting a minute before taking the can to give her an opportunity to rescind her offer. She didn't.

"Evans. Communications officer, Sam Evans." He accepted the beans and grinned down at them. "These are my f-favorite, but my buddies don't like it when I have them."

Quinn pulled a face, but had to smile, because Sam Evans looked so pleased over half a can of beans.

"Fabray!" Santana appeared in Quinn's space, looking incredulous and annoyed.

Quinn nodded politely at Sam and let her friend drag her back to their spot in line.

"I need a leash for you." Santana huffed. "I promised Rachel I would keep you warm and fed, and the first thing you do is swim through a river and give away all your food."

Quinn's lips twitched. "We _all_ swam through that river."

Santana shoved her shoulder.

Quinn leaned over and picked a wildflower and stuck it in her front pocket. She'd get Rachel flowers one day. But she was halfway to Tunisia right now, and her journey had barely even started.

~ooooooooooooo~

Rachel's squadron joined a Navy unit from Fedala on a ship headed up to Germany. Nurse Pillsbury informed her that they would begin active flying service once in Europe, one of twenty-four teams of flight nurses going from target areas to forward hospitals to the contiguous United States.

But Rachel didn't let herself believe she'd be home anytime soon.

She was trained to swim for a mile, to tow or push a victim for 220 yards, and to swim 440 yards in 10 minutes. She hadn't needed those skills in Port Lyautey, but now she'd be dealing with captured air fields and hospital ships in actual combat zones.

There would be far more arms to sew back together.

Rachel sat with Mercedes at a metal table in the cramped galley of the ship, mildly enjoying a can of preserved peaches. It was a treat, and she let herself have it because she couldn't stop staring at Quinn's elephant sketch.

Mercedes rolled her eyes at something behind Rachel, and Rachel knew who was coming even before he slid onto the bench next to her.

"Nurse Jones." Jesse greeted, perpetual confident smile playing on his lips. "Pleasure to see you again."

Mercedes' lips twitched. "And you, Ensign St. James."

Jesse straightened his shoulders and the collar of his pressed blue coat, grinning expectantly at Rachel and knocking his fingers against the table.

"Jesse." Rachel greeted blithely, focused on her peaches.

Jesse stuck an arm around her in a sort of half-hug, and Rachel groaned exaggeratedly, but welcomed it. His blue eyes sparkled as he pulled back.

"I was given specific instructions regarding you." He declared, looking amused at the idea, eyebrow raised in Rachel's direction.

Rachel flushed, wondering what he'd been told, and if he'd assumed anything like the pompous brat he sometimes was.

"You have a girl, don't you." He drawled lowly, careful not to let his voice reach the next table. "We dropped you at Lyautey and you found yourself a girl."

Of course he'd assumed.

Rachel's ears turned red and she shook her head shortly. Not in denial, just in displeasure at how casually he was speaking of it. Like she hadn't just left the girl she loved to go to the most dangerous place in the world right now.

Jesse licked his lips, slumping his shoulders slightly to let her know that he was being genuine. "I'd never speak about things of which I have no knowledge." He murmured.

Mercedes snorted a laugh, and he glanced at her with narrowed eyes.

"I'm saying, I won't…tell anybody." He clarified. He sat up again and clasped his hands on the table, watching Rachel confidently. "She told me to keep you safe, and I told her that you could take care of yourself. And then she _challenged _me to keep you safe, and I couldn't possibly say no."

Rachel smiled down at her peaches.

"She seems like a hard one to say no to." Jesse drawled, winking.

Mercedes nodded immediately. "Oh, she is."

"It's her eyes." Rachel said without thinking. Her eyes and her smile and both sides of her gorgeous face, and her tangled, salty hair and rough palms and smooth shoulders. Everything about Quinn Fabray made it impossible for Rachel to say no.

"So now you're my charge, Rachel," Jesse continued, "and you have to do what I say, when I say it."

Rachel laughed because she could see the glint in his eyes and knew that he couldn't possibly be serious, and Jesse laughed as well, shrugging like he'd given it his best shot.

"You'd better take her seriously though, St. James." Mercedes interrupted, pointing at Jesse.

He cleared his throat and pressed his lips together and looked at Rachel. "I never back down from a challenge, Rachel, so I'm going to keep you safe." He stated clearly. Rachel suspected it was also because he cared about her, but he'd never admit it. "And I'd prefer not to have this _Quinn_ character coming after me when we're all home."

Rachel chuckled softly. "I appreciate that." She conceded, finally finished with her peaches. She'd managed to drag out her enjoyment of them for an hour.

Jesse gestured down at the empty tin. "And I procured another can of those for you, at your girl's request."

It may not be the smartest thing to throw around words like "your girl," but it warmed Rachel's heart.

Jesse kicked his feet up and pulled out a stack of cards, and Mercedes clapped her hands together, and for a minute, it almost felt like home.

~ooooooooooooo~

Quinn's unit, along with the 6th Armored Division, flanked by the French XIX Corps, built up a logistics base at the eastern edge of the Atlas Mountains during January. Ideally, they'd be able to cut off the lines of supply of the German-Italian Panzer Army in the south, ending the stalemate and forcing the Germans to withdraw.

But Allied forces were stretched over a 200 mile front with only poor means of communication.

On the last day of January, the German 21st Panzer and von Arnim's 5th Panzer Army overran French forces at Faid, between the mountains and the eastern coast of Tunisia. US forces were stranded on hilltops at Sidi Bou Zid, and Quinn watched the tanks of the 6th Armored Division roll out of camp, knowing that she'd be joining them soon.

It was only a matter of time.

Twelve days later, they moved in the night, in the middle of February, by foot because the trucks were too loud. Their goal was to relieve the area of Sidi Bou Zid, and then move onto Sbeitla.

"Surely they've thought this through." Santana muttered, a mile away from their checkpoint, loud guns and armor in the distance.

Quinn didn't say anything. The cold wind rushed through the hills and stirred up clouds of sand, which stuck in her nasal passages and her mouth.

She just always seemed to have sand in her mouth. And there was the bizarre thought running through her head that she'd missed Valentine's Day.

"They've split the units to wrap around the hill." Her director announced loudly, striding down the double lines of soldiers. "One battalion goes left, the other goes right. We're going left."

Quinn could hear a 105 howitzer growing louder, reassuring because it would be American, but terrifying because it was _so loud_.

"Keep in contact with your superior. Take back the hill. If you-"

The director was cut off by an explosion of dirt and sand about ten yards to their right. Tiger I tank, Quinn could tell immediately.

"Move!" was yelled by somebody up ahead, and the battalion took off.

They went forward, hunched, stilted, and fast, and they left the sparse tree line and rushed down an incline, and _everything_ came into view at once. For half a second, Quinn wondered how comical it would be if she tripped and _rolled_ down the rest of the hill.

She kicked up dirt and kept her mouth closed to prevent herself from inhaling it all.

She could see where her group was heading, angling towards the unoccupied base of another hill, right through the line of fire of about 12 German tanks.

"This is where it starts, Quinn!" Santana yelled, about half a step behind her

Quinn heard multiple 88s start up, and she picked up her pace with every strangled cry that met her ears, struggling to keep her breath and ignoring the fact that when they'd _started_ running, there had been a much larger group in front of her. She was only following about 20 people now, and she heard  
3 consecutive blasts, all behind her, and she let herself turn her head slightly to make sure Santana was still there.

She was, clutching her helmet and her gun and driving forward.

"Infantry!" Somebody cried up ahead, and Quinn almost barreled into the back of the person in front of her. She managed to halt in the tall grass and clutched her gun, steady despite her heavy breathing and the sand in her eyes.

Green uniforms came around the hill, and there were shots fired next to Quinn. Santana was right. This is where it starts.

Quinn hunched her shoulders and steeled herself and fired at the small group of approaching Germans, taking courage in the cross against her chest and the elephant pin on her collar and the American tanks finally rumbling behind her.

"No, no, no, no, no." Quinn muttered, squeezing the trigger periodically. She wasn't sure what she was protesting, but the Germans fell and she was sort of glad that she couldn't actually tell if she was the one who'd hit any of them.

And then an 88 turned on and the woman next to her slumped sideways with a small cry and a splash of blood to Quinn's left arm.

"GO!" Santana roared, shoving Quinn's pack and high-tailing it past the Germans they'd just taken out to the base of the hill, which provided only a small amount of cover.

And then Quinn heard planes and realized they were being _bombed_ as well and wondered who in the hell had planned this counter-attack.

Sam Evans suddenly appeared by her side, red in the face and spitting sand out of his mouth, and he gestured to the curve up ahead. "There's another wave coming." He yelled. "If we hold them off, the other battalion can get some of our guys off the hill."

Quinn settled further into the grass. They were boxed in, so she nodded. She'd do what she could.

Sam whirled around with the first sight of the Germans advancing around the bend. He was smooth and steady with his gun, and he and Quinn and Santana and the other twelve or so members of their little group sat in the enemy's blind spot and took them out as they came.

Quinn focused on the grit in her mouth instead of the Germans being killed.

"Oh, hell." Santana let out with a strangled sort of moan as a Hummel came into view, about 100 yards off, heading in their direction.

A Bumble Bee. A 24 ton self-propelled artillery gun.

"Fall back!" was screamed from somewhere behind Quinn, and she was up immediately and yanking urgently on Sam's pack to make sure he obeyed.

He did, and they sprinted heavily back the way they'd come. Santana was knocked sideways by the dust cloud from a tank blast, and Quinn seized her upper arm and dragged her along for about three feet before she found her footing again.

Quinn watched Sam's boots thump into the ground because she couldn't see _anything_ through the dust.

Her director finally came into view, heading up the incline and back to the tree-line, and the other half of the battalion shot up from the right, in small groups.

"We're retreating." Quinn's director informed, yelling to be heard. "We're losing too much armor and their air support is too strong."

"What-did you get-did we get-" Santana stuttered, panting heavily.

"Two. We got two down from the hill." The director replied, addressing everybody. "Two guys from US 34th Infantry."

Quinn's heart dropped at that. It was all over the place, hammering and loud and in her throat and her stomach at the same time. She slowly worked all of her fingers and her shoulders and her toes as she jogged, just to be sure that they were all still there.

They went 3 miles before slowing to a fast walk and reforming their lines.

Quinn spat the sand from her mouth and pressed her lips to the elephant pin on her collar, able to think straight again.

"Ma'am, do you know their names?" she called out to their director. "Of the two soldiers?"

Santana gave her a curious look, but Quinn shrugged her off and listened earnestly, still shaking and breathing and trying to get her heart under control.

"Just one." Her director replied, walking backwards for a few yards. "It's Finn Hudson."

~oooooooooooooo~

Rachel wrote a letter on February 15th. She had things to proclaim and thoughts to process, and singing Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby for the sailors in the afternoons just wasn't enough for her. She needed to write it all down, because it was for Quinn, and if _anything_ happened to Rachel, she didn't want to leave Quinn with nothing to go on.

Lost at sea, with no records or memories or maps.

Quinn would read the letters one day. Rachel was sure of that.

So she took off her cap, coat, and shoes, and settled at the small table in the nurses' bunkroom, and then she pulled out her elephant sketch and smiled at the big ears and wrote to the girl she loved.

_Dear Quinn,_

_I have quite the active mind, as you know, so it should come as no surprise that I'm writing you a letter which you most likely will not receive for years. I have questions that nobody can answer, because we're all just doing our best, right? And I have songs I'd like to sing, but they're for you, and to you, and all about you, darling. Just know that I hum your favorites to fall asleep at night, and I picture your beautiful, brave face._

_I'm on a carrier right now, the USS Yorktown, and in eight hours I fly into Schweinfurt with eleven other nurses. We are all well, as of today, the fifteenth of February. We seem to have missed Valentine's Day, but I think you know that you're my valentine, honey. I hope you know._

_Brittany made us all cocoa last night, and tried to hang upside-down on her bunk. She hit her head when she fell and Mercedes had to bandage her up. It was very funny. I wish I could hear you laugh again. Jesse is taking care of me, just like you asked him to, but he'll be in France soon, and I don't know when I'll see him again._

_I hope you're eating, Quinn, and staying warm and healthy and not being too reckless. You're so brave, but you don't have to rescue everybody. Eat some lovely canned bread instead. I know how you adore it. _

_Quinn, my heart speeds up when I think about you, and it drops and thuds and lifts into my throat at the same time. I am so scared, and I know you are too, and that's okay._

_Think of apple pie, love._

_And please be safe, Quinn. You're carrying my heart._

_Always yours, however long it takes,_

_Rachel _


	7. Chapter 7

AN: I'm thinking only 2 or 3 more chapters after this.

**Sun Showers: Chapter 7**

Quinn sat by the fire, repeatedly poking Rachel's elephant pin into her thumb because the sharp, stinging pain was almost comforting, and steadily watching Finn Hudson toss crunchy bits of brown grass into the flames. His lips would quirk up every time he got one in the center, like he was playing a game in his mind, and Quinn wondered what his full smile would look like.

Probably goofy and out of place here. Familiar at home. A guy who'd have a terrier and a girl waiting for him to come back.

Quinn drew blood with the pin and wiped her thumb quickly along her pants.

They were in a town called Gafsa now, surrounded by plains, and setting it up as a forward supply base. George Patton had taken control of the US II Corps, and they'd be moving forward to the El Guettar valley, where Italian opposition was supposedly limited.

Quinn knew this would mean more hills. Obstructed vision and dark corners and distorted sounds.

She was tired of hills. She liked the plains, which stretched out so far she could almost imagine seeing a beach on the horizon. But she was also perpetually dizzy and hungry, so that could explain her hopeful hallucinations.

Finn took a swig from his canteen, and then bunched up his face like the water was bad and pressed his eye to the hole like he'd be able to see inside.

Quinn reattached the pin to her collar. She didn't need to add bleeding fingers to her list of problems.

"You know, you'll come off as a mental patient if you keep staring." Santana muttered, tossing a flurry of picked grass in Quinn's direction.

Quinn's gaze was unwavering. She was actually surprised that Finn was still oblivious to it.

"What do you think Rachel saw in him?" she wondered quietly.

Santana picked more grass, lit only by the flames. "Does it matter?"

Quinn sighed.

"You'd have to speak to him." Santana added, raising an eyebrow when Quinn didn't move.

"Hudson." Quinn said shortly, testing it out. Finn didn't respond, and Quinn cleared her throat and sat up straighter. "PFC Hudson."

Finn's gaze shot straight to hers, his eyes open and expectant.

Quinn didn't know where she was going with this. "Are you-is your food sufficient?" she questioned, ignoring Santana's muffled snort.

Finn smiled lop-sidedly. "I'm used to it."

Quinn nodded stiffly. She licked her lips before speaking again, unsurprised when her tongue came away with sand.

"I…I'm assuming you know Rachel Berry?" she asked, deciding that diving right in would be the best option. There were probably multiple Finn Hudsons in this war, and she wanted to be sure that she had the right one.

Finn's smile dropped immediately, and Quinn _almost_ believed he would lunge forward through the fire with how tense his body became.

He dug his large hands into his knees and stared through the flames instead. "I do, yes." His voice was an octave lower than it had been a minute ago. "We-she-I-yes. Yes."

Quinn held up a hand to calm his stuttering. "We camped with her at Port Lyautey for two months, and then left with the new year."

Finn wasn't blinking.

"I just thought…you'd like to know." Quinn continued, nodding reassuringly. "She was-she was alright when we left."

Quinn's voice cracked on the last sentence, but her gaze never wavered, and she could see Santana watching her out of the corner of her eye.

Finn swallowed. He unclenched his hands and the tension slowly melted out of his body until he was slouching again. "Rachel's okay?" he clarified, sounding hopeful, like it was too good to be true.

Quinn's words became lodged in her throat when she wondered if Finn still loved Rachel.

Santana seemed to realize this. "That was about ten weeks ago, but yes." She smirked. "Nurse Berry's a scrappy one."

Finn finally smiled again, gaze drifting off to the side like he was remembering something. Quinn ground her teeth together.

"She sewed Quinn's arm back together." Santana offered.

"Oh yeah, I was wondering about…" Finn trailed off and gestured vaguely at the scars on Quinn's face, before realizing that that was probably rude and staring down at his boots instead.

"Explosion." Quinn said bluntly.

Finn nodded, and met her eyes again. "I'm sorry."

Quinn believed him.

"Oh yes," Santana plowed on. "Nurse Berry knows _exactly_ how to take care of Quinn."

Quinn's head whipped to the right, but Santana only smirked down at her little hill of picked grass. Finn smiled, mildly confused. He wasn't an idiot though, because he watched Quinn and Santana, looking for some indication of what the comment meant, and his gaze settled on the golden elephant pin on Quinn's collar.

Realization dawned right away.

"She just means I was in that hospital bed for _a while_." Quinn explained, turning back to Finn and smiling weakly. "Rachel's the one who took care of me."

Finn watched her for a moment. "I appreciate you telling me. I'm glad she's okay. Or…she _was_ okay."

Quinn nodded, and then stared down at her dirty fingernails because Finn seemed to be eyeing her very intensely.

"She's one of my best friends." Finn continued slowly. "It's odd, with our history, but she's like my sister now. My family."

Quinn's head lifted. She brushed her tangled hair back to see Finn's understanding eyes.

Santana nodded proudly, like she'd accomplished some kind of goal with what had just happened. Quinn couldn't say anything because this conversation had brought Rachel's smiling brown eyes and soft pink lips and cute ears and legs and _everything_ back to the forefront of her mind.

Finn smiled slightly and tossed more weeds into the flames.

~oooooooooooooo~

It felt nice to sit _on top_ of the hill for once. Powerful, which Quinn enjoyed.

Except she was surrounded by loud American artillery, and it was dark, and she still had sand in her mouth. But that wasn't anything new. They had foxholes and slit trenches on one side of the hill, but Quinn preferred her spot in the open, lying slightly behind a mound of dirt, shoulders pressed into Santana's and Sam's.

Really, if she opened her mouth, she could swallow all the dirt she wanted.

And that was where she stayed. Until fifty Panzer tanks emerged into the El Guettar valley, led by halftracks and motorized bikes. Quinn saw them in the distance, and the Americans opened fire before the rumbling of the vehicles even reached their ears.

"_That's_ what we need." Sam yelled over the German 88's, gesturing at the motorcycles with his chin.

Quinn focused her gun on the infantry pouring out of the halftracks.

"I have one." Sam continued loudly between spurts of fire. "A red Triumph. It's my baby."

"Evans, shut up!" Santana shouted, knocking roughly into Quinn's side as a dirt cloud exploded to their right.

Quinn ducked her head while it cleared and pressed her nose into the green tie looped loosely around her neck. She appreciated Sam talking about his motorcycle. It took her mind off the fact that the only thing standing between her and fifty tanks was a small mound of dirt.

Santana kept coughing, and Sam exhaled sharply out of his nose to get rid of the dirt, and then spun around to look for Quinn's director.

Quinn opened fire again when another halftrack unloaded about a hundred yards down the hill.

She was fully expecting to disappear into a violent cloud of dust at any moment. But her hands were steady.

"We're not pulling out; just get to the trenches!" Quinn's director cried, running behind them, low to the ground, hitting Sam's pack to let them know she was speaking to them.

She'd already moved away by the time Quinn turned around.

"Like hell." Santana scoffed, repositioning her gun on the mound. "I'm shooting the first bastard who climbs up this hill."

Quinn stood up after Sam, crouching low and preparing for a run to the trench.

"You can do that from up there." Quinn gestured to where they were heading, having no concept whatsoever of the volume of her voice. She could've been whispering or yelling. She just couldn't tell.

The artillery drowned everything out.

"Lopez, let's _go_!" She bellowed, taking a step back to her friend right as Santana nodded.

And Santana stood up, and then fell right back over with a cry, a shot to the leg, and another small dust cloud to their right.

Quinn froze.

She was deafened, for sure. Temporarily or permanently or just in her imagination. Dirt coated her teeth and her tongue, and her nostrils were blocked, and her eyes stung, and the memory of meeting Santana for the first time flashed before her. A girl with dark hair and a disheveled school uniform kicking a baseball along a dirt path in California.

Her first words to Quinn had been "Your shoes are too shiny."

Quinn couldn't even _see_ her boots now. They were the same color as the hill.

She rushed forward and looped Santana's arm over her shoulder, while Sam did the same on Santana's other side.

"I can't-I can't see!" Quinn stumbled, and Sam dragged them to the right, stilted and low to the ground, and the air cleared and Quinn could see the opening to the trench up ahead.

Finn knelt beside it, helping others down, and he shot to his feet when he caught sight of Santana and moved forward to help Sam and Quinn. An explosion sounded in the distance, followed by a series of them, all melding into one blast, and Quinn was glad because surely an Allied minefield would hold off the Germans.

American artillery and anti-tank fire opened again, and Quinn couldn't hear herself think as she lowered Santana down to Finn in the trench.

She just nodded assurance to her friend, whose eyes were pained and fixed on her, teeth gritted as the blood stain on her green pants grew at an alarming rate.

Finn carried Santana to their small dispatch of nurses, buzzing around four temporary cots, and they moved a man with a bleeding ear off of one so that Santana could take his place. He went to sit against the wall, looking like he was able to hear about as much as Quinn was at the moment. Oblivious to the world.

"Third Officer Santana Lopez, WAAC, from San Marcos." Quinn recited for a nurse, noting that her voice seemed to be loud enough. "Gunshot, _Beretta_ I think?"

Sam nodded in agreement.

Santana would be dead if it was one of the 88s.

"It got her twice." A harried nurse stated, cutting down Santana's pants while another mopped up the blood to get a better picture. "One went through and one grazed her thigh."

Santana groaned and twisted on the cot, and Quinn remembered throwing up when Rachel had sewn her arm back together. Rachel and her soft hands and comforting manner and assuring eyes.

That was who they needed.

Santana jerked when the nurse hastily wrapped a tourniquet around her leg, tying it tightly and roughly to stem the blood flow. Quinn put down her gun and fell slightly against the wall, registering that her shoulder throbbed and her face burned and she still had sand in her mouth.

She met Santana's fearful eyes before they closed. One of the nurses approached, and Quinn did her best to spit out the sand and stay on her feet while the woman examined one of her ringing ears.

~oooooooooo~

Rachel was strapped into a plane out of Schweinfurt, transporting an American soldier who'd been shot in the leg back to the Yorktown, where another unit would step in to take him all the way home. Rachel suspected that the mangled wound had gone septic-the arrival of flight nurses had been delayed- but the man's life would be salvageable.

If everything went smoothly.

"Do you have a girl, Steven? Are you married?" Rachel asked, briefly glancing out the window at the farmland below.

She found that people loved talking about people they loved.

Robert tried to smile, white teeth blending in with his ashen skin, and Rachel pushed his hair back and dabbed at his face.

Steven Haviland. Nineteen. Of Dallas, Texas.

"Nah. But I got a little brother and sister." He said thickly, green eyes fixed on Rachel's.

Rachel nodded encouragingly.

"I'm teaching them to play baseball." Steven continued. "My sister-she's eleven, and she's already better than me."

"You must be a good teacher." Rachel said wisely.

Steven chuckled and grimaced, and Rachel was glad to see water below when she looked back out the airplane window. She hummed _Sun Showers_, because Steven probably felt lonely and scared, and that was what Rachel was supposed to do when she felt like that.

Quinn had told her so.

And it was comforting to know that Quinn could be a thousand miles away doing exactly the same thing.

~ooooooooooooo~

Quinn poured water over her arms, grimacing at the brown drops that dribbled to the floor. She sloughed off the grime with her nails, rubbing until her skin was raw, and then she used another jug to clean under her almost perpetually black fingernails.

She was breathing heavily when she finished, sweaty and filthy and sticky except for her forearms and hands. She sat in the grass and held Rachel's pin for a few minutes, glad to be out of the trench and back on the plains.

The sounds in her right ear were muffled, but Quinn still heard the thump of Sam's boots as he approached. He wordlessly held out a tin of ham, and Quinn shook her head.

"She's stable." He informed, half-smiling. "They're sending her home because she needs a real hospital."

Quinn eyed him. She knew better than to hope that Rachel would be one of the flight nurses to retrieve Santana.

"She's asking for you." Sam continued, settling on the ground opposite Quinn. He observed her arms and face for a second, and then grinned. "You're nice and clean, aren't you."

Quinn snorted and climbed to her feet, carefully reattaching Rachel's pin to her collar. Sam's face was as brown with dirt as hers.

"We're like warthogs, Quinn!" He called as Quinn walked away. "Rollin' in the dirt!"

Quinn laughed and spun and pointed at him. "Eat your ham, Sam!"

He waved at her, showing off his blackened nails, and Quinn shook her head and made her way to the first-aid tent. Santana had been scrubbed clean, so the pallor of her face could be seen. One bullet had narrowly missed her femoral artery, and the other had left a nasty open wound on her thigh. Quinn conceded that the pain could be comparable to having an arm sewn back on.

She absentmindedly ran her clean fingers over the scar tissue on her own cheek.

Santana saw her coming and smiled tiredly, and Quinn dropped her hand and leaned against her friend's bed when she reached it.

"It seems I'll be the first one to make it back." Santana remarked wryly, batting Quinn's hands away when Quinn tried to adjust her blankets.

Quinn's lips quirked. "It's not a race, Lopez."

"It kind of is. And I win, of course. I wish I could stay."

"No, you don't." Quinn said it easily, because she knew it was true.

Santana frowned. She was silent for a minute, and Quinn took the opportunity to adjust her blankets. "Then I wish I could bring you with me."

Quinn nodded. That was true too.

"No, really, Quinn." Santana said, sitting up a little. "The Allies basically have Tunisia. They'll take you to Europe next, and it'll just get worse before it gets better."

"I'll make it home, Santana." Quinn whispered firmly.

Santana stared at her. "Are you deaf?"

Quinn half-smiled. "Yes, actually."

Santana fought to keep a serious face, shaking her head. "Just…take care of yourself. I won't be around to save you anymore."

Quinn rolled her eyes.

Santana nodded. "But thanks for yesterday. It was an off day."

"You _may_ have saved me more than I've saved you."

Santana grinned.

"Take care of Rachel, okay." Quinn switched topics, smile fading. "Just-if you get back, and she gets back, and I'm still hopping around war zones-just tell her I love her."

Santana sighed exaggeratedly. "I'm sure she knows." She drawled.

Quinn narrowed her eyes. Her hand reached up automatically to rub the pin on her collar.

"You've only told her about three hundred times."

"Just…please."

"_Of course_ I will, Quinn." Santana's expression softened slightly.

Quinn sighed and looked down at Santana's leg under the blanket. "Are you sure you didn't do this on purpose?" she joked, remembering the guy who'd shut his hand in the truck door.

Santana pointed at the scars on Quinn's face. "Did you do that on purpose?"

Quinn raised her eyebrows questioningly. "What was that? I can't hear you. I'm deaf."

"I'm going to go home, and fix my leg, and then sit at my door every day until Mercedes Jones comes banging on it with all of you in tow." Santana drawled.

Quinn smiled at the image.

She and Rachel would be there too, with smiles and an apple pie in hand. She hummed _Sun Showers_ on the edge of Santana's bed before returning to her tent.

~ooooooooooo~

In the next week, Rachel prepared for another trip to Germany. Hesse, this time. It was like swooping in for a rescue, and it was adrenaline-inducing and terrifying, but so rewarding because Steven Haviland and the other five soldiers on that plan had survived.

Rachel was in the bathroom, putting on her uniform with Quinn's picture tucked safely into the pocket, when Brittany came in, reflected in the small, thick mirrors.

Brittany was tearful and flushed, and Rachel's heart seized because there were so many things that could possibly have happened.

"Are you-what's wrong, Brittany?" Rachel asked lowly, quietly, before she could panic. She turned slowly to face Brittany, still trying to pin her hair up.

And then she realized Brittany was smiling, and Rachel almost laughed out loud because she really needed some good news.

"Santana was sent home." Brittany informed, obviously trying to keep herself calm. She bounced on her toes and balled her hands up into fists.

Rachel's mouth dropped open. "She-_why_?"

"She was shot."

Rachel's eyes widened.

"And that's-that's _awful_," Brittany said, shaking her head sadly, "but she's home now, and she's okay."

Rachel processed this. She nodded and smiled, because Brittany's eyes were sparkling and happy, but her heart was heavy and that elephant drawing was pushing against her ribs.

"What about-Quinn was with her, right?" Rachel asked as the scenarios started pouring into her mind. "Were they ambushed? Is Quinn alright? Did they-"

"Santana's name was just on a list, Rach." Brittany interrupted gently. "A different unit of nurses took her home. We don't know about Quinn."

Tears pricked Rachel's eyes. She bit her cheek and threw that useless hair pin into the sink.

"They were going to stay together." She said desperately. "If Santana was shot, Quinn was prob-"

"Rachel, stop." Brittany instructed firmly. She stepped forward and plucked Rachel's hairpin out of the sink, and then gestured for Rachel to turn her head so that she could put it on.

"There are so many things that could've happened. It's no use making yourself crazy."

Rachel choked on a breath and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes.

"If Quinn had-if something happened to her, she'd be on a list." Brittany reasoned, stepping back and tilting her head to examine Rachel's hair.

Rachel clung to that statement. No news was good news.

Except breakdowns in communication were often and expected, and what if Quinn had just fallen through the cracks? Santana got shot, but Quinn got _killed_ and was on her way home in a box, at best. Left unrecognizable on the battle field at worst.

Rachel whined loudly and pressed her hands to the side of her head like she could force those thoughts away.

She saw Quinn on that first day, fluffy golden hair matted with sand and blood, arm torn apart, determined hazel eyes turned fearful and confused. Even if she _was_ still alive, she'd have nobody looking out for her now.

Rachel's cheeks burned and her eyes blurred with tears.

"Quinn." She murmured thickly, breath catching in her throat, because that was the only word she could come up with at the moment.

Brittany caught her wrist and tugged on her arm until Rachel looked up.

"There's no use worrying, Rachel." She said again, slowly, seriously.

Rachel breathed heavily and tried to nod.

Brittany let go of her arm and reached inside Rachel's coat, pulling out the folded up elephant drawing. She showed Rachel the back first, "_Soon will be clear, my dear, while sun showers are here_," and then flipped it over and smiled at the elephant and his oversized ears.

Rachel's lips twitched as well. She took the drawing with shaky hands and traced the squat little animal Quinn had drawn.

"She'd like you to smile." Brittany murmured.

It was impossible not to looking at the drawing. Quinn was a goof, and Rachel had to believe she was still alive because the thought of _Quinn's_ smile was the thing driving her home.

~oooooooooo~

On the eve of April 14, 1943, two American C-46 transport planes were shot down over Wiesbaden. Nine injured servicemen were killed. Three were taken as prisoners of war, along with two flight nurses, an aide, and a pilot.

Rachel woke up in a dark room, sore and with sand in her mouth. She stared at the ceiling for a minute, almost believing she was lying on the beach with a starless sky.

And then she realized her coat was gone, and the drawing was gone, and she was on the ground in Germany with Jesse, Brittany, and Mercedes.

If ever there was a time to sing _Sun Showers_, this was it.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Some violence in here, be aware. Also be aware that my grasp on the German language is tentative at best.

**Sun Showers: Chapter 8**

"You are in Stalag XI-C, at Bergen-Belsen. It is a camp for our prisoners. Nurses will work in the hospital and the enlisted will work in the sawmill. You will receive two meals a day when possible. You will be shot if you attempt to escape. The northern end of the camp holds Jews intended for shipment overseas in return for our civilians; you will not go near there."

The man, who'd introduced himself as Hauptmann Relke, spoke with a thick German accent, chin lifted high in the air like he had places he'd rather be than in the dimly lit bunkroom where Rachel, Brittany, and Mercedes stood.

Rachel kept her hands clasped in front of her, staring at the man's dark boots because his piercing blue eyes were cold and terrifying. Bright black holes.

"You start in the morning, before the sun. Tardiness results in punishment."

Everything was ominous and vague, designed so that every misstep seemed fatal. Rachel knew she'd be dead already if this camp wasn't working-or giving off the appearance of working-in accordance with Geneva.

"Jetzt schlafen."

The captain spun on his heel and strode out the door, flimsy and wooden and squeaky enough that Rachel knew she'd grow to hate it.

Nobody moved for a minute, processing everything Relke had said, hoping it was true and wishing it would end. At least Jesse would just be in the sawmill. At least they'd get food. At least the Soviet prisoners with sunken eyes and scowls and exposed collarbones they'd seen out the windows were _alive_.

"What does that mean?" Brittany finally whispered.

"Now sleep." Rachel supplied, voice scratchy and hoarse.

She didn't know what had happened when the plane crashed, except they'd actually emergency landed in an open field, and now her throat was sore and her arms were bruised and she'd wanted to cry in relief when Relke had handed her the jacket with Quinn's drawing. Or _thrown_ it at her.

There were six cots in the room, lit by a single lamp next to the door, and absolutely nothing else. Three had thin, scratchy blankets on them, but no pillows, and Mercedes grimaced when she sat down and ran her hand over the fabric.

She looked up and gestured for Rachel and Brittany to sit on the cot opposite her.

"I'm sure we can handle this." Mercedes stated, voice wavering only slightly.

Brittany nodded resolutely.

Rachel had no idea if she could handle this. She'd never been a prisoner at a German work camp before. _Sun Showers_ hadn't left her head since she'd woken up.

"We do what they say, no exceptions." Mercedes continued, eyes flitting between Brittany and Rachel. "We do our jobs, eat, and sleep, and we'll be out of here soon."

Brittany licked her lips, dry and cracked because the water tasted awful. "You probably shouldn't say that out loud."

"What?"

"That-" Brittany leaned forward. "That we'll be out of here soon."

Rachel sighed heavily. "She's right. We don't want to…incite anything."

Mercedes set her jaw and nodded. Rachel moved to her own cot, bundling up her jacket to use as a pillow before lying down and staring up at the knotty, dark wood roof. Her chest tightened because she wanted the sky and the sand and the beach and hazel eyes again, and she pulled out her drawing to trace for the nth time.

"And we look out for each other, still. Always." Brittany said into the darkness. She threw her blankets onto the floor like the cot would be more comfortable without their scratchiness. Rachel knew she'd be freezing in the middle of the night.

Mercedes hummed and Rachel nodded because her throat was too constricted and sore for words.

She knew she wouldn't sleep tonight. She was too frightened of not waking up on time and what "punishment" that would bring. But she was also frightened that if she showed up to work sleepless and tired she'd be punished in another way.

"Can you-somebody tell a story." Brittany sniffled from her bed, minutes later, her thoughts probably similar to Rachel's. "Something happy, please."

It sounded desperate, and Rachel wracked her mind for something to say.

"My father let my brother drive his truck once." Mercedes offered thoughtfully, wistfully. "My brother-you know, Jeremy-was only eight, and he could barely reach the pedals. I was sitting in the backseat and screaming the whole time."

A smile tugged at Rachel's lips. She could picture that. Brittany's sniffling quieted.

"He pressed too hard on the gas, and couldn't reach the brake quickly enough, and we went right off the road and into a lake."

Brittany gasped.

Rachel could hear the smile in Mercedes' voice. "It was shallow, and we just climbed out the windows and I pushed Jeremy in the water. He said it was my screaming that made him crash."

Rachel breathed a small laugh. "It probably was."

She expected something to hit her in the face, but Mercedes had nothing to throw. No pillows or extra clothes or blankets. Mercedes just scoffed instead, and Rachel lolled her head to the side and smiled at her.

"Does the truck still work?" Brittany asked.

"It does. Or it did when I left." Mercedes was quiet for a moment. "I hope they're all okay. Jer's only sixteen now."

Rachel pried off her shoes and then pulled the papery blanket up to her chin. It'd probably give her a rash. But that was better than freezing.

"One day, at Lyautey, I was treating this scrawny kid in the bed next to Quinn's." Rachel started quietly, wincing at the burn in her throat. She only barely kept her voice from catching on Quinn's name. "He hadn't even seen combat, but he fainted and hit his head on a truck and gave himself a concussion."

"Oh no." Brittany laughed.

"I was talking to him, and Quinn was listening, eating her ham," Rachel smiled at the memory, "when he asked if I was married and if I thought he was handsome."

Mercedes laughed as well. "Oh, no he didn't."

"He did." Rachel confirmed. "And Quinn choked on her food. And she sat up straight and just stared at him, even though he was completely oblivious. He told me I had a beautiful nose, and Quinn dropped her ham and said 'Excuse me, Private, but Nurse Berry is taken."

Brittany and Mercedes' laughter warmed the dim room.

"Of course she did." Mercedes remarked.

"And the guy looked at me, and I nodded, but Quinn kept going." Rachel's smile grew. "She said, 'Rachel has somebody who loves her and wants to marry her, and I'm sure she's flattered, but please leave her alone.'"

At the time, Rachel wasn't sure if Quinn actually wanted to marry her, or if she was just saying that to get the guy to stop talking. Now, she knew they'd spend the rest of their lives together. If all went well.

"And then she offered him her ham." Rachel finished, smile splitting her face. "He didn't know what to say."

Brittany sighed softly. "That's sweet."

Rachel was finally able to put the picture down and close her eyes. They opened again ten minutes later with shots and yelling in the distance.

She wouldn't be sleeping tonight.

~ooooooooooooo~

Axis resistance in Africa ended on May 13th, 1943. Plans turned to the invasion of Sicily, and then Italy, and Quinn knew that Santana had been completely right.

She'd end this thing in Europe. She'd die there or she'd win there. Push to the heart of it all, in France and Germany, until _somebody_ came out on top. Mussolini and Hitler and thousands of miles of Axis forces stood in Quinn's way, and the journey seemed so arduous that she preferred not to think about it.

So Quinn sat in the galley of a ship headed to the Gulf of Gela, in south-central Sicily, preparing for an amphibious landing in two weeks.

"I should've been a pilot." Sam mused, sliding into the bench on the other side of Quinn's table. "You know they've been strategically bombing all of southern Italy and Sicily? Naples, Messina…"

He trailed off and sighed. "It'd be better to be up in the sky."

"Further to fall." Quinn remarked, too quiet because her hearing hadn't returned. Finn nodded.

Sam was silent for a moment. "At least we're moving up. Forward. North. Progress, you know."

His optimism was admirable. Quinn shared it most of the time, just because she had no other option. And she was _safe_ right now, as safe as she could be, and there was no sand in her mouth and there was ice to put on her aching shoulder.

"Tell us a story." Quinn said to nobody in particular. Her hair was down, and it didn't smell like fire, for once, and she could almost pretend she was in a cafeteria at home.

Finn grinned. "What about?"

"Ham," Sam said at the same time Quinn answered "Rachel."

Finn's smile grew. "I actually have one that involves both of those."

Quinn found herself inordinately excited. Maybe by some taste of life outside of the present, of _before_, or maybe just because of Rachel. She loosened her shirt collar and folded her hands on the metal table to settle in.

Finn cleared his throat and shook his arms out.

"Okay, first, you should know that before Rachel and her dads moved to New York, they lived in Ohio, where I'm from."

Quinn nodded. She'd known this.

"My family ran a pig farm, before we shut down a few years ago, and every time Rachel visited my house she'd tell me that she wanted to set all the pigs free."

Sam tilted his head, really learning about Rachel for the first time.

"Anyway, one day three of our piglets actually got out of their pen and went straight down to a mud pit on our property, and Rachel happened to be at our house at the time, and we convinced her to help collect the pigs by telling her that they'd hurt themselves if they weren't put back in the pen."

Quinn bit her lip. She could picture Rachel and her wide, helpful doe eyes worrying over baby pigs. Quinn tried to contain her smile.

Finn took a sip of water, wetting his lips like he was getting really into this.

"So we're all out there, me and Rachel and our friend Kurt and his dad and my mom, and we've caught two piglets, and Rachel catches sight of the third one and goes _racing_ off after it."

Finn made a hand movement to demonstrate how fast Rachel moved.

"I mean, really, I didn't think she was so into it, but she just took off like a rocket. Straight into the mud pit, up to her shins, shrieking because she didn't want to get her dress dirty."

Quinn wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh and cry, and she refused to take her eyes off Finn's lips because she didn't want to miss a thing.

"And when I say 'shrieking,' I mean _screaming her head off_." Finn continued.

Sam grinned. "She was scaring the pig into submission."

"Yeah, probably." Finn nodded, eyes smiling. "The pig actually stopped, and Rachel caught up to it, but was so surprised that the pig stopped that she didn't know what to do with him."

"She ran away from it." Quinn guessed, voice a little strained, trying to contain her smile.

"Yeah, yeah she did. Turned around, took two steps-_screaming_-and fell on her face in the mud."

Sam laughed loudly. Quinn laughed silently because no sound could make its way through her throat.

"So Kurt caught the pig, and I helped Rachel out of the mud, and she named the pig Walter, and told me she'd actually had fun chasing it around."

"What happened to Walter?" Sam wondered.

Finn narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "I'm not _sure_, but we were barely staying afloat, so he was probably…you know. We might've had him for breakfast."

Quinn scoffed thickly, like she was choking on something. She shook her head at Finn.

He shrugged. "But-I don't know-maybe you'll come across him one day. He was red, with a big, white, heart-shaped spot on his right side. I think that's why Rachel liked him."

It was silent for a minute, and Sam got up to refill his water while Finn picked thoughtfully at his fraying cuff.

"Thank you." Quinn managed to murmur. Finn looked surprised. "Thank you for telling us. Me. Anything that can get us to smile."

A corner of Finn's mouth quirked up.

"Well, I do have more. Let me tell you about the time Rachel got chicken pox when she was twelve."

~oooooooooooo~

Most of Rachel's patients were wounded Soviet soldiers. She learned that 20,000 of them had come into the camp after Operation Barbarossa, which explained the rows upon rows of low, wood-paneled barracks, and many had died from typhus fever. It was rampant, spread by fleas, ticks, and lice thriving in the squalor.

The soldiers had fever and chills and rashes-and Rachel hoped that the rash on her neck was from the blanket last night, because _really_, she'd only been here a day- and she kept the lights of the neglected hospital dim so that the men would be comfortable. Or as comfortable as possible.

It was too much to hope that Germany would provide the newly-minted antibiotics for their prisoners of war. Clean water and food seemed to be too much to ask for as well.

There were no lonely young Americans talking with her and confiding and crying into her shoulder, and there was no blonde woman eating canned ham in bed with a sling on her arm, trying not to smile too wide. There were rows of silent men, dying slowly in a language Rachel didn't speak.

She was almost glad when she was told there was a German officer for her to tend to.

Rachel walked down a row of beds, and she could see the barbed wire fence outside the windows, angled inwards at the top to prevent people from climbing out.

She sighed, and then came upon a man in a dusty green uniform, sitting on a cot at the end of the line. His hair was dark and his eyes were angry, and Rachel could easily tell he'd been shot in the upper arm.

She slowed her pace as she approached, and then stood in front of him, unsure of how to act.

"Hallo." She ventured, eyes on his forehead. "Ich bin Nurse Berry. Kann ich den arm?"

The man said nothing, but uncovered the wound on his arm, and Rachel read the pin on his coat to see that his name was Hinrich.

"You are American." He accused, in an accent only slightly less thick than Helke's.

Rachel was glad he was speaking English. Conversing in German could only get her in trouble. She tugged lightly at his sleeve to get a better look at the wound.

"I do not want an American." The man stated shortly, angrily. His teeth ground together, like Quinn's when she was trying not to cry.

It seemed like Hinrich was trying not to explode.

"There are four English nurses on duty as well." Rachel tried to keep her voice steady. "Would you like me to fetch one?"

Hinrich scoffed, a loud, barking laugh. "Nein."

Rachel used her scissors, small and rusted, to cut off part of the man's sleeve. The wound wasn't terrible at all, and the bullet had gone straight through. She wondered who had done this to him. There really wasn't enough alcohol in the hospital, so Rachel only used a few drops to clean the entrance and exit points.

"Mehr." Hinrich demanded, eyes boring into the side of Rachel's head.

Rachel's jaw trembled, and she did as he asked, using the rest of the alcohol in the bottle on her cloth.

"How did you end up here?" Hinrich asked, almost mockingly, pleased to see that Rachel was listening to him.

Rachel felt like she was toeing along a precipice. "I am a flight nurse. My plane…was forced to emergency land."

She spoke softly, trying to disturb the air as little as possible while wrapping Hinrich's arm.

"Gut." Hinrich eyes were on fire, daring Rachel to tell him that _no_, it was not 'good.'

Rachel stayed quiet.

"Speak to me." Hinrich demanded abruptly, loudly, and Rachel took a surprised step back and knocked her elbow into the empty glass alcohol bottle. It toppled off the table and shattered, and Rachel's heart raced, poised and frozen next to the shards.

"Nutzlos! Nutzlos madchen!" Hinrich stood, cheeks reddening. "Idiot girl! Useless!"

Rachel breathed shallowly as she was backed against the table. He was about a foot taller than her, lithe and muscular and maybe only a coupler years older, and Rachel was overwhelmed by the smell of the alcohol on his arm.

"I know you are a Jew." He declared, staring down at Rachel.

Rachel's eyes burned, locked on one of his buttons, tracing the bird and the swastika over and over. She tried to stay completely still.

"You know you are lucky you are not in Buchenwald." Hinrich spat. "Or Dachau. You belong there. Why are you here?"

Rachel bit her tongue until it bled, cheeks flaming. She wished Quinn were here. Or her dads, or Finn, or anybody else in the world.

She was so shocked when his hand hit her cheek that the pain didn't register. It was blurry and surreal, and Rachel staggered sideways to stay on her feet, clutching the blazing red mark in one hand and the edge of the table in the other.

"Sprechen!" Hinrich demanded, and Rachel felt the tears finally fall, and choked on a breath trying to do what he said.

"I'm-I don't-I don't know." She managed. "I don't know why I'm here. Ich weiss nicht."

Rachel shut her eyes as her head started to throb. She leaned into the table to stay upright, trying not to swallow any blood because her teeth had cut into her cheek.

Hinrich backed away, eyes roving down her body. "Nothing. You are nothing." He shook his head and spun on his heel. "Nichts."

Rachel's face crumpled, and she lowered herself onto the floor because she was getting dizzy, almost unaware that she'd started crying. She wasn't sure if her cheek was numb, or if she was in so much pain all over that her cheek just didn't register.

It was probably in her head. And her heart hurt.

"_Quinn_." She cried brokenly, automatically reaching for the drawing in her coat. She flattened it reverently, scared that she'd folded it so much it would fall apart.

_Soon will be clear, my dear, while sun showers are here._

She quieted herself almost immediately. Tears leaked out of her eyes, and her cheek burned and her head hurt, but _soon will be clear_. Rachel reached up to the table for an almost-clean cloth and shakily dabbed the blood out of her mouth, using it to muffle a few stray sobs as well.

"Rachel?" Mercedes' voice carried down the hall, along with the squeaks of the floorboards.

Rachel tried to compose herself as best she could.

"Nurse Berry are you-" Mercedes rounded one of the beds, and Rachel watched her boots and heard her gasp. "Oh my-what _happened_?"

Mercedes rushed forward, dropping to her knees in front of Rachel. Rachel clutched the cloth in one hand and Quinn's drawing in the other, and shook her head, unable to meet her friend's wide, disbelieving eyes.

"He hit you." Mercedes guessed softly, incredulously. There was a flash of anger in her eyes.

She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Rachel, careful to not crumple the paper, and Rachel held on tightly and pressed her face into Mercedes' neck. It wasn't salt and fire and warmth like Quinn, but it wasn't sharp and alcohol and cold.

She felt sad for the people who had to do this without a friend.

"Did he hurt you anywhere else?" Mercedes whispered, right by Rachel's ear.

Rachel managed to shake her head.

Mercedes sighed. "It's alright." She murmured, rubbing Rachel's back.

Rachel nodded and sniffed brokenly.

_Soon will be clear, my dear, while sun showers are here._

"We'll be alright." Mercedes repeated.

Rachel coughed and pulled back, throat even more raw than it had been before. Mercedes took her cloth and dabbed at Rachel's face.

"Let's find you some ice, okay?" Mercedes suggested gently, starting to stand. "You're alright, honey."

Rachel shook her head. "Let's just-" she coughed again. "Just get back to work. Please."

Mercedes hesitated.

"I don't want to…cause any more trouble." Rachel stood, breathing more deeply now.

Her eyes were less blurry, and the pain was more localized where she'd been hit. She could handle it. She nodded at Mercedes and gave her a quick hug, murmuring a thank you before skirting the broken glass to collect the unused bandages.

Skies would clear. Quinn had told her so.

~oooooooooooo~

The landing on July 10 at Gela was difficult, but only because of strong winds and unexpected offshore sandbars that jarred the ships. Quinn's unit hit the shore six hours behind schedule, pleased to find that the Italian defensive plans did not include immediate pitched battles on the sand.

But once the Axis figured out where all the landings had occurred, spread among massive amounts of British, Canadian, and American forces up hundreds of miles of coastline, they attacked.

Quinn's unit found cover in the small dunes, poised with their guns while the _USS Shubrick_ and _USS Boise_ destroyed several Italian tanks of the Niscemi Armoured Combat Group.

It was so incredibly loud, louder than Lyautey, but Quinn didn't mind because she was deafened to half of it. She dug her elbows and boots into the sand and fired at the Livorno Infantry.

"Stay down and wait it out." Her director called, almost buried in the sand. "Armor has it."

Quinn focused on the sounds of waves, wind turning them choppy and blowing grit and hair into her mouth and eyes. She tied her scarf behind her ears so that she could _breathe_ at least, and it further muffled the Italian planes and American destroyers, explosions occurring in various directions, anti-aircraft fire.

Maybe losing partial hearing had been a blessing. Quinn liked the quiet.

The ground rumbled below Quinn, and her director was yelling before Quinn could register what caused it.

"Up! A hundred yards east, let's go!"

Nobody questioned the order. Quinn caught the tank, a Fiat M14/41, in her peripheral vision, and it seemed to catch fire in a cloud of smoke as she sprinted to the right, struggling for footing in the sand hills. The explosion behind her let her know that it had been taken care of.

She remembered the French battleship _Jean Bart_, and how its rumbling had never ceased for that first week at Lyautey. It was constant thunder in the distance, like the American destroyers now.

Quinn worked systematically with her gun, until infantry no longer appeared and tanks no longer cut through the sand. Air fire dulled and artillery quieted until the Allies were just people lying in the sand on a beach, waiting for orders.

By the time the sun set, Quinn was sitting by a tent, no dinner because she was running low, pressing her fingers around her ears to see if she could get something to work and picturing Rachel chasing after pigs in a mud pit.

She recognized Sam's shadow looming over her, and she looked up to greet him, surprised to find his jaw set, face dark and serious, fists clenched.

"Sam." She said as he crouched in front of her.

His eyes were sad and angry and passionate and swirling, and they kept Quinn's gaze.

"I have something to tell you, Quinn." He said ominously.

Sam wasn't ominous. He was a smile where it didn't belong, a laugh and a half can of ham kind of guy.

Quinn wondered why he didn't just sit next to her. Why he was crouching in front of her, like she was about to receive horrible news. Quinn stared.

"Can you hear me?" Sam asked.

Quinn nodded shortly.

"You're aware I'm a communications officer, right?"

Again, Quinn nodded. She swallowed and dug her nails into her palm, her boots into the sand. "Sam, is she-"

"We have word that a flight nurse unit was forced to emergency land in Wiesbaden, two months ago." Sam stated slowly, clearly.

Quinn sucked in a breath. She almost choked, and her eyes were suddenly burning and she could hear everything in the world.

"Two nurses and one aide are among those taken prisoner of war at Bergen-Belsen work camp."

Quinn dragged her hands into her hair, tangling her fingers up and _pulling_, and Sam reached out and encircled her wrist with his hand to keep her grounded. Because she was ready to fly away, in fury and desperation and love.

Quinn shook her head. "Don't-don't-she's not…"

Her voice didn't even sound like her own. The open sky and the waves and the sand had been comforting before, but now the warped sounds of the water and grit _everywhere_ distracted her from the only thing that mattered.

"Quinn." Sam's voice stayed steady, even if his eyes shone. "One of the nurses is an R.B. Berry."

Quinn's shook her head again. "Well that's-that's not-it's a common name-"

"The other nurse is M.N Jones and the aide is B.S. Pierce."

Quinn's composure collapsed. She rocked forward, digging her fingers into her hair, sure that she'd be wailing if her throat wasn't so closed up, if her body wasn't so paralyzed.

"Quinn, keep listening, okay?" Sam urged, ducking to try to catch her eyes. "Can you hear me?"

Some unidentifiable noise worked its way up Quinn's throat and tumbled through her cracked lips.

"Bergen-Belsen is only a work camp." Sam explained lowly, making sure Quinn understood every word. "They comply with Geneva, as far as we know. Rachel will be receiving food, a place to sleep, and she will be working."

Quinn tried to control the shaking of her shoulders, some silent waves that wracked her body.

"You have to believe she's alright." Sam pressed.

He reached up to Quinn's collar and unpinned the small, gold elephant, and then he untwined Quinn's hand from her tangled, salty hair and pressed it into her fingers.

"You have to believe she's alright." He repeated quietly.

Quinn pressed the pin into her palm. She shuddered, like she'd come unfrozen, and was able to breathe again. She brought her fist up to her mouth and kissed the worn little elephant.

Wisdom, luck, loyalty, strength, all from Rachel. _Love_.

Her eyes were angry. Dark and fiery. Her heart had finally been provoked, brought out of its full, warm bubble, antagonized and enraged. Quinn's jaw was set in a determined line, even as tears rolled down her cheeks.

This is not how it would end. She wouldn't let it.

_Soon will be clear, my dear, while sun showers are here_.


	9. Chapter 9

AN: Again, the Italian's no better than the German. Next chapter is the last one.

**Sun Showers: Chapter 9**

Rachel spent almost a year suspended in time. She was up before the sun and asleep long before it set, so intellectually she _knew_ days were passing, but they all blurred together. Brittany kept a piece of paper under her flimsy mattress to use as a calendar, confidently crossing off days before falling exhaustedly into bed, hungry, tired, just a bit more hopeless than the day before.

According to that, it had been nine months in Bergen-Belsen.

They'd all lost weight, lost energy, lost a bit of their minds, but Rachel still sang softly at night for Brittany and Mercedes and three other nurses who joined their bunkroom. She kept her head down because the Germans seemed to be particularly antagonistic towards her, and she took special care of her elephant drawing, having memorized it because it was tearing along the fold lines.

And that's why Rachel was able to recognize Noah Puckerman's drawing that day, early in April, 1944. She was looking through a wooden crate of records, trying to identify two severely burned Soviet soldiers, when she came across it.

It was in a stack with other papers. Some letters, emblems, pins, dog tags, faded bronze buttons. Rachel lifted a thick packet of envelopes and saw the elephant. Its ears were smaller than her elephant's, paper faded and stained, mottled brown and black and yellow, tearing at the corners.

Her heart jumped into her throat at the sight of it, hands frozen so that the sharp edges of the envelopes dug into her skin.

She almost toppled backwards out of a kneeling position, but collected herself and took a breath because there was _no way_ this could be Noah's drawing.

So she glanced around the small hospital storage room to be sure she was still alone, carefully flipped the paper over, and narrowed her eyes in the dim light. It took a minute to find the writing, but she gasped once it caught her eye.

"_We'll get there_."

In Quinn's scrawl, black ink faded.

Rachel swallowed roughly. Over and over to prevent herself from crying. _Nobody_ liked crying here. Her knees dug into the uneven wood floor and she shakily folded up the drawing and put it in her jacket pocket with her own.

And then she went back to identifying the Soviet soldiers, learning their names, like she'd done with everybody she'd encountered in the past three years.

Jesse was the first person Rachel spoke to that day. They sat outside for their "lunch" break, on splintery benches several yards away from the food line, settled and subdued.

"Noah Puckerman's dead." Rachel muttered after a single bite of her stale bread. She dipped it in water just so that it would go down smoothly.

Thinking of Quinn and her canned bread had been the only thing tugging Rachel's lips up for the past nine months.

Jesse looked at her. "I don't know who that is."

"Neither do I, really." Rachel licked her lips and met his blue eyes, as bright as ever. "He was Quinn's friend. He…liked to play card games, and he came off as arrogant and conceited, but he was a good man."

Rachel recited it exactly as Quinn had told her. She gave a pitchy, watery laugh at the memory. "He kept her company and gave her pants."

Jesse nodded slowly. "Noah Puckerman."

They were silent for a minute, Jesse probably burning Noah's name into his memory. Every syllable, along with Rachel's description.

And then his lips quirked up and he side-eyed Rachel. "So your girl convinced him to give her the clothes off his back. Impressive."

"He wasn't _wearing_ them." Rachel rolled her eyes.

Jesse shrugged. "Still. Quinn must be-well, we all know how Quinn is."

"You've never met her."

"No, I've heard from her and she frightened me and that was enough." Jesse grinned.

Rachel chuckled.

"You'll introduce me when we're home, right?" Jesse asked casually, picking at his bread. "I promise I won't steal her out from under you. _Literally_, from under-"

"I will, and you most certainly won't." Rachel interrupted, flushing to her ears.

Jesse smiled slightly. "Good. Something to look forward to."

He split his bread in half and handed it to a man on the other end of the bench. And then he pulled Rachel into a hug, and he'd smelled like sawdust and burning wood for about nine months now, and Rachel knew that Quinn would _love_ this man for fulfilling his promise.

Quinn was a constant topic, so common in their conversations that she'd become intangible, and Rachel had to remind herself that _yes_, Quinn was real and out there and in love with her and waiting for her to make it home.

Rachel still wrote weekly letters, and they shortened to about a couple lines long because she lost the ability to put into words what she was feeling, if she'd ever had it to begin with. So she stuck with simple things. Quinn would know the rest.

_Dear Quinn,_

_I'll never forget the sound of your voice. That prospect terrifies me. I think I would give mine away to hear you say 'I love you' every day. _

_I love you. _

_Still, always, until that apple pie, yours, _

_Rachel_

~oooooooooooo~

Quinn's unit moved northward so agonizingly slowly through 1944 that she felt like she was surely losing her mind. She'd lie on the ground at night, bundled up with odd articles of clothing and a sleeping bag and maybe some leaves because she'd use _anything_ to battle the cold, and contemplate just leaving and trekking up to Germany by herself.

But then the sun would rise and she'd realize that Rachel needed her _alive_, and Quinn would return to her state of barely-constrained, vibrating impatience and frustration.

Rachel was the first thing she thought of when she awoke every day, and the last picture in her mind before she fell asleep, when she _could_ sleep.

For six months.

Moving up through Italy, some of her hearing returned, only to be muted again by the constant battle. Southern Italy was in Allied hands by 1944, and Quinn found herself on the Winter Line, fighting rough terrain and awful, bone-chilling weather in a heavy push for Rome.

And then Operation Overlord met her ears, and she'd never been so prepared for anything in her life.

"A broad, beachhead landing at Normandy." Her director described. "Thirty-nine divisions, over a million troops. Eisenhower's been running deception operations and landing exercises in Devon, and the date is set for May."

Quinn's breath caught in her throat. It was dusk, and the stars were out because they sat in a farm field in the middle of Italy, and everybody's eyes were shining, and she was _excited_.

"We'll be a second wave on one of the beaches." Her director continued, meeting each of their gazes with blazing blue eyes. "Be prepared. This is going down in history."

"We're taking back western Europe." Quinn breathed, heart hammering.

"We're pushing for the Seine first."

They'd have France in the west and the Soviets in the east, and Rachel would be sandwiched in between, in the heart of it all.

Quinn was ready.

Her unit advanced in the morning, and she strode next to Finn, strong and purposefully, listening as he described an infection in one of his toes. He refused to limp, though, and Quinn admired that. Her left arm was slowly becoming dead weight, but she'd never let that show.

"It's yellow right now." Finn informed. "Quite a sight."

Quinn hummed.

"I'm almost convinced it's going to fall off."

Quinn frowned and glanced up at Finn lumbering along beside her. He looked nervous, like it was an actual worry of his. That his toe would disconnect inside his boot.

"We don't have much further to go, Finn. I'm sure your foot's fine."

He shrugged doubtfully, keeping his head up to scan the edge of the small village outside Avellino.

"I'd be alright without it." He mused. "Maybe a bit unbalanced, but perfectly fine otherwise."

Quinn almost snorted. "I'm not letting your toe fall off, Hudson."

Finn's lips twitched, but then mumbled voices reached them from several yards to the right, and his smile dropped as his gun came up. Quinn spun to find two small faces peering at them from around the corner of a small stone house. She stared for a second, adrenaline surging, before gesturing for the rest of her group to take a break while she approached the two girls.

They disappeared around the pink-tinged house, and Quinn raised an amused eyebrow at Finn before following them.

Both girls sat on short, stone steps outside the house. They wore faded dresses, and Quinn's heart stuttered when she realized they had the same eyes as Rachel. The same dark hair and strong features and careful expression.

She wondered how many people still lived in this village.

"Ciao." Quinn called, hesitantly approaching the girls. They couldn't have been more than ten years old. The fact that their dresses matched warmed Quinn's heart.

"Mi chiamo Quinn." She said softly, crouching down with her gun on her back. The girls stared at her with wide, dark eyes, only lingering on Quinn's scars for a second. "Come ti chiami?"

Neither girl replied with their names, and Quinn bit her cheek and studied them. She wouldn't be surprised if her Italian was all wrong. They probably couldn't even understand her.

"Are-hmmm…Siete sorelle?"

One of the girls, the smaller one, tilted her head forward, and Quinn smiled warmly. They were sisters.

"That's good-that's-" Quinn pursed her lips. "Va bene?" she questioned, eyebrow raised. "I'm not-um-no sto bene gli Italiani con."

The older girl cracked a smile at Quinn's stilted language skills.

"Mi chiamo Mimi." She whispered, steadily meeting Quinn's eyes.

Quinn nodded encouragingly.

"Elia." Mimi said, gesturing at her little sister.

Quinn smiled at them both. "You-avete bei nomi. I believe that's right."

Mimi nodded shyly. "Grazie."

"And your dresses." Quinn gestured at the faded patterns. "Bella."

Mimi's cheeks turned the same shade of pink that Rachel's did, and Quinn almost started crying right there on the ground. Elia mumbled something in Italian, too advanced for Quinn, so she sat back on her heels and watched Mimi take her sister's hand.

"Are you-are you hungry?" Quinn asked, noticing how the dresses hung loosely from their small bodies.

They stared at her, brows furrowed.

Quinn tried again. "Are-hmm...Cibo?

That might've been Latin. Quinn wasn't sure. She laughed because Mimi and Elia seemed confused, but they were genuinely trying to understand what she was talking about.

"Okay…Sei affamata?" Quinn tried again.

Both girls nodded immediately, and Quinn grinned at her success. She took the pack off her back and pulled out her last can of ham.

"Share." She instructed, putting the can in Mimi's hand. "Um-condividi. Okay?"

"Grazie!" Elia declared, surging forward to give Quinn a hug. Quinn was surprised, but she chuckled and held on tightly, pressing her nose into the girl's dark hair. Mimi hugged behind her sister, and Quinn wrapped her up as well.

It was like hugging two mini-Rachels. Quinn's eyes burned, and she smiled brightly at them and got to her feet and waved goodbye. They looked delighted with their can of ham.

All Quinn had left was canned bread.

She was ready for Normandy.

~oooooooooo~

Hinrich died of typhus, delirious and coughing and rubbing at a violent rash with Rachel at his bedside. She'd never been more conflicted in her life, torn between helping him and comforting him because he was a _human being_, and letting him go because he was _horrible_.

But Rachel couldn't just let anybody go. Even the man who'd hit her and told her she belonged in a different kind of camp eight months prior. So she brought him ice and towels and talked him out of his stupors, always checking herself-every inch of her body-for parasites at the end of the day.

She was relieved when he died, like it was justified, and she felt guilty for that and cried on Brittany's shoulder for a good hour that night.

The Germans took Hinrich away because he was too _special _to be buried with the other victims.

Now Rachel stood in a line with the five other nurses in her bunk, watching and listening to Captain Relke talk and wondering how things just kept getting _worse_.

"Our POW camp is closing." Relke informed.

He sounded tired himself. He slouched more than he had nine months ago, voice and eyes dulled around the edges.

"The Schutzstaffel is turning the whole facility into the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp."

Rachel's heart stopped. She heard Brittany's gasp and whatever pained noise came out of Mercedes, and she was overcome with the sudden urge to just run away. Sprint out that squeaky, awful door and past the low, wooden buildings, and climb right up over the fence, through the barbed wire, or over it, or tangled in it, she really didn't care.

Rachel had heard stories. She couldn't stay here.

"You are…" Relke sighed as he met their eyes. "You are lucky you are all skilled. You can be used. You will not stay here."

Rachel was dizzy. She didn't know what was happening.

"Your talents are valuable. If you obey us, if you stay quiet," Relke eyed Rachel like she would be shouting her Jewish faith from the top of the nearest mountain, "you will be safe. You are going to France. Calais or Normandy."

One of the nurse's relieved sighs echoed in the mostly empty room.

Rachel knew Calais and Normandy were beaches, or port towns, and she was struck with the absurd thought that if Quinn was still alive, that's where she would be. At a beach. Rachel was ready to go.

"Questions?" Relke asked genuinely, thumping one of his boot heels dully against the floor.

Rachel glanced at the silent nurses around her. They seemed too frightened to step forward, and Relke was not yet worn down enough to encourage them further.

"The-the soldiers?" Rachel asked in a small voice.

Relke's gaze shot to hers, and he studied her for a minute before dropping his eyes to her shoes. "They stay." He said shortly.

Jesse was strong and healthy, and he still prided himself on his full head of hair and the bounce in his step. If anybody could survive on tenacity and thin dreams, it was Jesse St. James.

Rachel's people were being scattered all over and she could do nothing about it.

She was put in a truck the next day, with eleven other nurses and crates of supplies, and driven off towards France. Her heart pounded, almost excited, because something was changing, something was happening, and she could _do_ something now.

"What's going on in Normandy?" Brittany asked quietly, almost drowned out by the rumble of the engines.

She was sandwiched between Rachel and Mercedes, and Mercedes shrugged. "More fighting? A western front?"

Rachel figured something big must be happening if they were being spared from the camp. There usually were no qualms about doing away with all people in the vicinity.

"Maybe they need everybody they can get." She mused softly.

Mercedes eyed her, almost hopefully. "Maybe this is it."

Brittany furrowed her brows. "This is what?"

Rachel smiled. Her heart fluttered and hope and longing surged through her bones like new life.

"Maybe they're landing there. Mainland Europe." Rachel murmured, not sure in the slightest, but desperate to hear what the sentiment sounded like out loud.

"The Allies are landing in France."

~ooooooooooooo~

Quinn spent weeks on the English coastline, unsure of when exactly she'd be crossing the Channel or on which beach she'd land at Normandy, but prepared every single day. Her pack stayed full and her boots rarely came off, and she won several bars of chocolate from Sam and Finn playing cards by the cliffs.

She became an expert. Noah would've been proud.

The invasion began on June 5th, in the evening, before storms could force any delays.

Quinn boarded the _USS Thomas Jefferson_ at a run, faster than the urgent jog of the rest of her unit. The first wave had hit a wall, almost literally, but held strong while waiting for the rest of the Allied forces.

Quinn was eyeing one of the thirty-four landing craft on the ship when Sam approached her. He smiled uneasily, sadly, and sat down on the metal bench. Quinn narrowed her eyes.

"Do you have terrible news?" she asked bluntly.

Sam seemed to have a lot of that lately. Plus nice little gems, like when the Red Army won another battle, and Americans sank multiple Japanese subs in the Pacific.

Sam pulled on his helmet strap and worked his jaw around.

"Tell me." Quinn demanded.

"I…It's D-Day, Quinn."

Quinn nodded resolutely. "Right. I could be dead in an hour, so tell me what's happened."

Sam looked like he was in physical pain.

"Sam, I will throw you off this ship if-"

"Bergen-Belsen's turning into a concentration camp."

He really looked like he needed to vomit. It was exactly how Quinn felt once the words reached her ears. Her faulty ears. She must have heard him wrong.

"What?"

"The POW camp at Bergen-Belsen is being transformed into a concentration camp."

Quinn didn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. It was only when Sam said her name multiple times that she realized her chest was still moving and her hands were still warm and the pin was still on her collar. She was speechless. _Horrified_ and speechless.

"It already has, actually. Two months ago." Sam's voice was gravelly. "News is…delayed."

Quinn's cheeks flamed red. Disgust and anger and the barely restrained urge to throw up.

"She's not-she can't-" Quinn clenched her fists. "She's _Jewish_."

Sam swallowed. "We don't even though that she's there. There's quite a bit of miscommunication."

Quinn exhaled violently through her nose.

"Let's just-we have to stay focused, okay?" Sam pressed.

"I'm fixing things with my parents when-_if_- I get back."

Sam raised his eyebrows at the abrupt statement, and Quinn turned and looked at him seriously, like she was trying to convince him of something. Trying to make him believe her.

"I can't have these people I love on the other side of the world." She said slowly. "I can't-I can't _not_ see them for years."

Sam nodded.

"I promised God."

"You promised him what?"

Quinn lifted her hand to her collar and ran her thumb over the dull edges of the elephant. She shrugged. "A lot of things."

Sam waited expectantly.

"Like, I'm going to fix things with my mother and father if Rachel and I make it home."

Quinn's lips trembled because Rachel was in a _concentration camp_ and God had to know that that girl just didn't belong there. Nobody did.

"I'm sure He's listening." Sam said softly. He tilted his head and knocked amicably into Quinn's shoulder. "You're probably Rachel's angel."

Quinn bit her tongue and coughed, and there was grit in her mouth.

They hadn't even landed yet. She could see France in the distance, ships and aircraft, and the din on the _Jefferson_ was growing as the amphibious vehicles were prepared.

She'd started this whole thing on a beach two years ago. She'd scarred half her face and almost had her arm blown off.

She was losing some affection for beaches.

But she'd also met Rachel at Morocco. Fallen in love with a girl. Learned to appreciate ham and warmth and salt. Anything could happen.

~ooooooooooo~

Rachel figured that the landing had been a surprise. It would explain the Germans' general disorganization and the fact that she was currently sprinting between sandbags at Omaha Beach in an active combat zone checking on fallen German soldiers. She'd managed to squash down her inner turmoil and come to the conclusion that if somebody was dying, she'd help them.

No matter who they were. Even the guys with Swastikas on their buttons managed to plead for Rachel to assist them, like their hatred didn't matter any longer because now they were _dying_.

Rachel just remembered Harris and Haviland and Puckerman, and pretended she was helping them instead. They would deserve it. They would be proud. They'd clench their jaws and stagger to their feet because they still had a job to do.

"He's too far gone." Rachel yelled over the noise, crouched in the sand next to a man bleeding from his abdomen.

Another German knelt down to help her staunch the flow.

"He's lost too much. He doesn't even have a pulse." Rachel informed, already glancing around for the next person.

It had been chaos hours ago, violent and loud as the influx of Allied forces battled dug-in German infantry and machine gun nests. Part of the beachhead had been secured, and Rachel figured that the nurses had been sent up to the volatile sandbag area just so they would be killed.

If the Germans were surrendering, they'd take as many down with them as possible. What good were POW nurses to a falling power?

"Help him!" The German commanded, desperately seizing Rachel's upper arm.

Rachel wrenched him away. "He's _dead_."

Allied aircraft overhead drowned out her words, but the man could read her lips. He dropped to his knees and Rachel shook her head and took off for the next pile of sandbags, where Brittany knelt by a man with a head wound.

Rachel was halfway there when she was shot at.

Bullets struck near her feet and blew the sand up her shins, and she was so shocked she lost her footing for half a second and landed with a hand in the dirt. Brittany must've caught the movement because Rachel could hear her screaming her name.

"Come on! Right here! Rachel!"

She was always running through _sand_. Honestly, she was getting a bit sick of it.

Another bullet struck, this time at Brittany's sandbags, and Rachel closed her eyes and ran.

~ooooooooooooo~

"Put down your weapons!" Quinn yelled, _roared_, at the women who'd opened fire.

They looked at her with wide eyes and heaving chests.

"They're-they're Germans." One informed loudly.

Quinn's glare was vicious. "They are _unarmed nurses_ in German uniforms." Her voice was sharp and hoarse and _loud_ because they'd run by artillery to get to this point on the beach, and everything through her ears was muffled.

"But they're not surrendering."

"Lower…your…weapon." Quinn enunciated every word, eyes blazing, almost glad that her commander had gotten delayed back at the water line.

The soldiers around her nodded in agreement, and Quinn eyed the sandbags where the nurse had disappeared. She was probably crouching behind there. Quinn was barely managing not to run over and check.

The woman was short with dark hair, and she ran quickly, like a rabbit with stilted strides. Like Rachel.

"Let's advance." Finn suggested, appearing at Quinn's side.

She glanced at him distractedly. "I don't-"

And then a head popped up over the pile of sandbags, and Quinn's whole body seized because it was _Rachel._ Any doubt was wiped away when Brittany's head popped up next.

After wanting to _run_, everywhere and anywhere for the past ten months, Quinn found that she was frozen in shock. She was crouching on a beach with sand in her mouth and a gun in her hands, completely unable to move her limbs.

Finn squinted his eyes at the nurses and then looked at Quinn with confusion. And then his jaw dropped.

Rachel peered cautiously over the top of the barrier, absolutely sure now. She recognized the way the woman held her head, proud and determined, and the way the woman's left shoulder sat lower than the right.

Rachel had saved that shoulder.

She let out a choked noise between a sob and a cry and a laugh, and Brittany grasped her forearm in concern.

Rachel plastered her hand over her mouth, conditioned to stay quiet.

"It's-it's Quinn." She managed, tears already forming in her eyes.

Brittany gasped. "It can't be!"

Rachel just nodded. She could smile now, but she was crying and she couldn't speak. She stood up fully, because the only Germans around were wounded, and she couldn't see Quinn's eyes, but Quinn had a hand over her heart, and Rachel _really_ hoped she wasn't having some kind of cardiac problem due to shock.

Quinn brought her hand up and pressed her fist to her mouth, and Rachel laughed joyfully, thickly, and did the same motion.

Quinn glanced down the slowly settling beach.

"Let's go." Finn urged. "Move up."

Quinn nodded immediately, refusing to take her eyes off Rachel. "Not everybody. Just you, and those three." She pointed to a few soldiers who _hadn't_ fired at unarmed nurses.

And then she took off at a run. She was half deaf, again, and there was sand in her mouth and her shoulder felt like it had been knifed, but Rachel was _right there_.

Right there in the line of fire of a German who popped out from one of the sandbags, yelling "You let him die! You could have saved him! Liar!"

Rachel spun around right as the man lifted his gun, and Quinn slowed and lifted her own and took him out before he could shoot. She spun mid-stride to make sure there was nobody else.

They'd made it this far. Nobody was taking Rachel away from her now.

Four Sherman tanks rolled up from a hill behind the sandbag area, and Quinn froze automatically, digging her boots in the sand, not accustomed to running _straight at_ active armor, even if it was Allied. Green troop trucks followed, and soldiers disembarked, leaping out of the back, to scan the sandbags.

Rachel was so close.

"They're American! Nurses!" Quinn shouted as the soldiers moved in on Rachel and Brittany. "They're friendly!" She doubted anybody could hear her.

She tried to surge forward, but Finn caught her arm and held her tightly. "They'll keep her safe. They'll keep her safe." He assured, right against her ear.

Rachel was trying very hard to not look threatening. "I'm American." She answered when one of the soldiers asked where she was from.

"New York. I'm-I'm Rachel Berry."

"Okay, Rachel, you're safe now." He assured, although his eyes were moving so fast, so aware of his surroundings, that Rachel couldn't meet his gaze.

"Quinn!" she yelled blindly as the soldiers started guiding her back to the line of tanks. "I need-I'll-I'll see you!"

Quinn watched her go, struggling against Finn's hold.

"My soldiers, my guys, everybody else I've scrounged up, we're moving west!" Quinn's director jogged up with a group of guys in tow. "They're working on a plan to break through the beach. Step it up!"

So Quinn ran through the sand, filled with joy and relief and shock, still, and anxiety because anything could happen to Rachel when she was out of sight.

"She's a rescued POW." Finn reminded her breathlessly. His boots went further into the sand than hers did. "They'll send her home."

Quinn knew this, and she smiled, _genuinely_, for the first time in months, and she felt the skin around her lips crack and her eyes burn, and there was still that god damn sand in her mouth.

Rachel would be safe. The beach was Quinn's friend. Soon will be clear.


	10. Chapter 10

AN: This has been so much fun and so different to write. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks for reading and for all of your comments!

**Sun Showers: Chapter 10**

The Allies liberated Paris on August 25, 1944. Quinn was present, in a faded uniform and sun-bleached hair and boots which had never felt lighter, despite the fact that she'd never physically been in worse condition in her life. Except when her arm had been hanging by a bone.

Now it was just sort of dangling, useless and heavy, maybe throbbing and aching if Quinn tried to use it too much.

But she hadn't died yet, and Rachel hadn't died and was actually _probably_ on her way home, and there was no sand in Quinn's mouth.

She couldn't really complain that she was forced to stay in the vicinity of Paris for almost a year. She'd been desensitized, temporarily, to things like fields of bodies and artillery in the background and canned bread for supper.

Even when Quinn was sent to Belgium, to a place right outside Bastogne, to fight against what was supposed to be the _last major German offensive_, she was fast on her feet and practical and positive while thousands of people died in the Ardennes.

"We'll get back to normal when we're home." Sam mused one night, mid-December, 1944, in the Bulge.

Quinn rolled acorns around in her mouth.

"You know, when we're fed. Mended." Sam drawled. He leaned against a Sherman tank, waiting for the armored division to roll out ahead of them. "We'll look back and wonder if it all really happened. It's out of this world right now."

Quinn bit down, glad that the crunch eased the ache in her jaw.

"Don't swallow that." Sam warned.

"_I'll _never wonder if it all really happened." Quinn spoke through the bits in her mouth. She gestured vaguely at the burns on her face.

Sam smiled. "You're right. Your hair's white from the sun, so you'll always have the reminder."

Quinn spat her bits of acorn over his boots.

"We're good people." She told him, bending down for her pack. He banged a fist absently against the flank of the tank and she caught his eye. "Good people won't forget."

The Allies waited out a snowstorm and then advanced on the Panzer armies, and Hitler withdrew all forces from the Ardennes on January 7th. And then Quinn found herself back in Paris, six months after she'd seen Rachel at Normandy. That had been like a shot of life, and Quinn clung to the image like the pin on her collar.

She cut her hair, and then it grew, tangled, matted, and she repeated the process. Finn found her fabric to use as a sling for her arm, and she and Sam played soccer with some French boys in the nearly unscathed heart of the city.

Quinn ran the engines of the troop trucks every few hours to keep the fuel from congealing in the cold weather, so she had oil stains on her elbows for three months. They turned into spots for her, part of her skin, like the blotches of color on the cows in Texas and California.

"You're a Dalmatian!" Finn declared every time Quinn sat next to him.

She'd given up trying to scrub it all off.

It was May 8th, 1945, when it finally happened.

Quinn sat in the grass near the Seine wearing one boot and no socks, and missing three buttons on her coat, reorganizing her pack and watching soldiers swim in the water. She was counting them every few minutes to make sure nobody vanished.

Sam ran along the bank. He sprinted, _flat-out_, in bare feet and his green trousers and nothing else, and Quinn could see the grin on his face from a hundred yards away.

"It's over! It's _over_!" He yelled, arms in the air to indicate that it was news for everybody, though his eyes were only on Quinn.

Quinn stared at him.

"It's over!"

She breathed shallowly. Her heart hammered and rushed with adrenaline, and she remembered how Rachel had told her that it seemed like she was always trying to contain her smile. There was no denying that the effort was twisting Quinn's scars and hurting her face at the moment.

Sam crashed into her, seizing her upper arms to keep himself upright.

"They surrendered." His voice was charged and excited. "Germany surrendered unconditionally. The war in Europe's over."

Quinn nodded. Sam's fingers digging into her shoulders prevented her from toppling over. Rolling around on the ground. She nodded again and her eyes burned, and she finally choked a laugh, drowned out by the gathering crowd.

She could breathe. She pressed her lips to Rachel's pin.

~ooooooooooo~

Times Square was flooded with people. More than Rachel had ever seen before. It was frenzied and flurried and loud with unbridled enthusiasm, and she loved it. Or she _would've_ loved it, because this was the kind of atmosphere she lived for.

She stared up at the scale model of the Statue of Liberty, wincing a bit at the roar of the crowd, _so_ unlike the beach, and her dad draped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her into his side.

"They're going to light the real one for the first time in four years." He yelled into her ear.

Rachel smiled in acknowledgement.

"They were waiting for you to come back." Her dad joked, leading her around several grid-locked cabs and screaming children with red faces to get closer to the mini statue. "New York wasn't the same without you. We're so glad you're alright, honey."

She'd come home with four battle stars, two tattered elephant drawings, half her friends, and a vivid mental picture of hazel eyes and yellow hair which refused to fade.

"You've said that before." She drawled, but she tugged on her dad's hand and kissed his cheek when he looked down.

"I just want to see my girl smile."

Rachel grinned exaggeratedly, and it hurt her cheeks and made her feel a bit like crying.

"Not that smile." Her dad shook his head and glanced around the crowd like he was looking for inspiration.

He wouldn't get a real smile unless he pulled Third Officer Quinn Fabray up out of a subway grate.

"The war's over, Rach!" He finally proclaimed, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders and twirling on his heel, reveling in the celebration.

Rachel smiled slightly and watched him spin. His hair was grayer than when she'd left, and he was thinner, but he still bounced in his leather shoes like they were springs.

"You're here with me and Leroy and your friends, and you're _safe_. No more traipsing across Europe, no more-no more living in the trenches, no-"

"I never lived in the trenches, dad."

Beaches, open fields, random sandy hillsides, but not trenches. She hadn't been "tortured by Nazis" either, as her neighbor seemed to think, and she hadn't gotten anywhere near enough to Hitler to "kill that bastard with your bare hands."

Hiram sighed. "Surely you're happy to be home, at least? I thought you were."

She was, for the first few months. She'd been sent home as a rescued POW and Quinn would be following soon, no doubt. And then Thanksgiving and Christmas passed, and that was cheery, a good distraction, and she sang in her cozy living room and refused all offers of apple pie.

And then it was winter, and it was freezing, and _thousands_ were dying in the Battle of the Bulge, and nothing was guaranteed anymore.

It was the waiting that pressed on her chest and tore at her heart.

Half of it was still in France. Maybe Germany. Maybe _Japan_ by now.

"I am so happy to be here with you, daddy." Rachel told Hiram honestly. She flinched sideways at a high-pitched bicycle bell, and he tilted his head and studied her eyes once she was still again.

"You are."

Rachel nodded.

"I know it's hard to wait." Hiram said after a minute, gazing at Rachel. "Especially with that-with how you feel about _Quinn_,"

He still grinned every time he said Quinn's name, like it was a secret between the two of them.

"But we're all here for you. You know that. We just…patience, right?"

Rachel growled in frustration and dug her hands into her dress pockets. She opened her mouth to reply when somebody grabbed her shoulders from behind. She nearly flew out of her skin.

"You two need to slow down." Mercedes said loudly, breathing heavily. She leaned sideways into Rachel, and Rachel clutched at her wildly beating heart and staggered into Hiram.

Brittany's bright blonde hair emerged from the crowd next, moving backwards like she was dragging somebody else along.

"Hey, roadrunners," Santana panted, waving an arm vaguely at Hiram and Rachel, "you need to ease up. Not everybody has two legs."

Mercedes snorted. "_You_ do."

"Yes, but one of mine got shorter as it healed, so it's not two full legs."

Rachel narrowed her eyes. Santana didn't seem to lean to one side. She limped, and she used that fact to get everybody to do her bidding, but she most definitely did not have two legs of different lengths.

"I can carry you, San." Brittany offered, bouncing on her toes. "Then we'll have eight legs."

Rachel chuckled at Hiram's confused expression.

The Star-Spangled banner started playing, crackling at first, out of speakers Rachel couldn't see, and the crowd grew exponentially louder. Brittany hollered incoherently, just because it was what everybody else seemed to be doing.

It really was the end, Rachel realized. If Quinn was alive, she would be coming home, and that was enough to get Rachel to celebrate alongside everybody else.

~ooooooooooo~

"Vive le France! Vive le France!"

It was bellowed right into Quinn's ear, like somebody was climbing up her back and breathing down her neck, and she spun around to glare at whoever was doing it. A soldier. A Parisian.

An American man with curly brown hair in a faded blue Navy coat. He grinned like he'd been trying to annoy her, and Quinn narrowed her eyes and glanced around for Sam or Finn. The man's mouth moved, but Quinn didn't catch what he said. She shook her head.

His smile faded. "Are you deaf?" He mouthed and pointed to his ear, and Quinn thought he looked genuinely concerned.

She was tired of people asking if she was deaf. She shook her head again.

His smile returned. "Fabray!" He yelled. "Your pack says Fabray!"

Quinn nodded warily.

The man's eyes ran over the scars on her face and the blue sling on her arm. He looked delighted and expectant, and Quinn considered fleeing. She lifted her chin and ground her teeth and wondered which way to go.

"You're Quinn Fabray."

Quinn's feet stayed planted. She watched him suspiciously.

"Do you-you can hear me, right?" The man's smile faltered.

Quinn rolled her eyes. "I'm not _deaf_." She said loudly.

He grinned again, bright and confident, and stuck out his hand. "Jesse St. James. It's a pleasure."

Quinn definitely heard that. Read his lips, his body language, felt the vibrations in the ground. Her jaw went slack and she took half a step forward before she could stop herself. She took a closer look at Jesse.

Clear eyes, red cheeks from the sun, tangled brown hair, scruff on his jaw. Pompous expression, exactly as Rachel described. Quinn stepped forward and hugged him, because what else was she going to do with the man who helped her keep Rachel safe?

Jesse didn't falter at all, and he chuckled into Quinn's hair.

"It wasn't the scars, you know." He said as he pulled back, careful with her sling. "I recognized your jaw from your profile. Rachel loves your chin."

Quinn laughed shortly. She didn't know what to say.

"And she wasn't exaggerating." Jesse winked appreciatively. "Rachel found herself a looker."

Quinn shook her head. "You are exactly how she described."

"Wonderful, I'm sure. Handsome. Intelligent. Talented."

Quinn focused on the eagles on his buttons and tried not to smile.

"I'm not scared of you anymore." Jesse offered proudly. "I fulfilled my promise."

Quinn met his eyes again. They were soft and mirthful, and she tried to refrain from giving him another hug.

"Do I get a reward?" He raised his eyebrows.

Quinn snorted.

"Rachel said you'd have canned ham with you. That can be my reward."

"We're in Paris." Quinn stated. "I'm sure you can find something better."

Jesse looked doubtful.

"You deserve…" Quinn trailed off and shook her head because she couldn't think of anything good enough. And because she didn't _say_ things like this. She gave pats on the back and nods and stiff words of approval.

"I don't-I'm so grateful, Jesse. It really-it just means a lot to me that you were there for her."

Jesse lifted a shoulder. "Well, she's Rachel Berry. She almost didn't need me. And I knew you'd come after me if anything happened."

"She did need you."

While Quinn was gallivanting around Italy and Africa, Rachel would've needed people to feed her when she gave away all her food. To ask her to sing when she was quiet for too long.

"We needed her as well. She told us stories." Jesse crossed his arms and smiled suggestively.

"I frightened you, remember?"

"Past tense."

Quinn narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin.

Jesse hummed vaguely and cleared his throat. "Where are you heading next, Quinn?" He asked more seriously. "The Pacific? Or do you get to go home?"

Quinn sighed at the subject. She shrugged because she didn't know.

"They need to send you home."

Quinn eyed him sharply.

"Not-not because of…" He gestured at her shoulder and face. "Just because you've been out here for three years. You deserve to go home."

Quinn shrugged.

"And your hair's white from the sun. And you have cow spots on your elbows. Oil, probably?" Jesse grinned. "I mean, you're the most beautiful woman I've seen in a while, but come on, Quinn."

Quinn didn't miss a beat. "You have a bush growing on your face."

"Vive le France, darling."

Quinn promised herself that she'd take Jesse home with her. Settle him down in New York or California or wherever he'd come from and buy him a puppy, a terrier, and then set him up with a girl who deserved him.

Finn, Sam, and Jesse, her trio of boys. If Quinn was sent home, she would be elated. She'd thank God and luck and elephants and Eisenhower, and whoever else was out there making decisions. If she was sent to the Pacific, she would grit her teeth and claw her way back to American shores.

She hadn't made it this far to die in the middle of the ocean.

~ooooooooooo~

After the war in Europe ended, Rachel refused to leave the house. She still collected bread and fruit and cheese for her dads because she wasn't going to be _completely_ useless, but she did it before the sun rose so that she was home all day.

She really should've been ignoring the sun, though. The soldiers and sailors arrived at Pennsylvania Station at all hours, light or dark.

Rachel just wanted to make sure that she wouldn't be frolicking around Central Park when Quinn came knocking on her door.

Not that Rachel was _sure_ Quinn would come to New York, to her house. Not that she knew if Quinn was even _alive_.

Rachel ate pastries on her doorstep and read her dads' books and sang to herself and the stray cats out back. Time had passed more quickly at Bergen-Belsen.

"Come to work with me, honey." Leroy entreated every morning when he opened the front door to find Rachel perched on the stoop.

"I have to stay here." Rachel always replied.

And Leroy would nod sympathetically and ruffle her hair, and tell her to go inside when it got too hot.

By mid-June, Rachel had abandoned the stoop altogether. She put a bright red bow in her hair every morning and baked bread every afternoon because of the picture Quinn had put in her head three years ago, on the beach at Morocco.

Maybe if Rachel got enough of the elements right, Quinn would show up.

She bought yards of ribbon and pounds of flour, and her fathers never complained.

It was the hottest day of the summer, and Rachel was sprawled ungracefully on the couch trying not to sweat too much and listening out for the bell timer on the stove. The sun was blinding her, even through the drapes, and she flinched when the calm was disturbed by three solid knocks on the front door.

Rachel blinked up at the ceiling. Knocking _used_ to send her into a panic, but she'd learned to identify the different raps on the door.

Santana and Brittany would barge right in. Mercedes would bang relentlessly until the door was opened, and her dads' colleagues would knock lightly, respectfully, several times. The neighbors would knock quietly and peer through the windows.

Three solid knocks could be militaristic. The armed forces had been organizing and gathering information, leading to a flood of families finding out about the fates of their loved ones.

Rachel didn't recognize this knock.

She felt her throat closing up, squeezing her airway. She pulled herself stiltedly to her feet and checked the mirror on one side of the living room. Her face was flushed, but not sweaty, and the bow in her dark hair was full and red. Her eyes were anxious and glazed because of the heat.

There was another series of knocks.

Rachel glanced at the door. Solid, dark wood. Her heart raced and she rocked on her toes and knocked her hip into a hall table.

The pain didn't even provide a distraction. Her chest felt hollow and full, like she was being sucked into the ground and lifted into the air, and her cheeks tingled like she needed to be sick.

She'd had panic attacks since being back, and she knew they'd end if she just _opened the door_.

Rachel was light-headed for a moment, and she briefly contemplated just going to lie down, but that would be impossible. Physically, emotionally, literally impossible.

She was answering this door.

Rachel held her breath and clenched her jaw so that her heart wouldn't go pounding out of her mouth, so that nothing _else_ would go flying out of her mouth, and she took three smooth strides, grasped the knob, and swung the door open wide.

She was in tears before it hit the wall.

With one glimpse of blonde hair. A chin held high, uneven shoulders and an anxious, suppressed smile. Everything was blurry after that. The knob hit the wall and Rachel pressed her hands over her mouth to prevent all her noises from escaping.

"Rachel."

Quinn wore her prettiest summer dress. Her hair was wind-ruffled and her cheeks were red and she was looking up at Rachel, trying to keep her composure because she was _Quinn_, and she couldn't drop to her knees or burst into tears and _take_ Rachel on the stoop.

Rachel choked out a loud, spontaneous laugh and shot forward into Quinn's arms, and Quinn stumbled backwards into a lamppost. Rachel clung to her tightly.

"I can smell the bread." Quinn remarked, dazed. Her voice sounded foreign. Rachel's hair was soft.

Rachel twisted her fingers in the fabric of Quinn's yellow dress and cried against her neck, pressing her nose into the warm, pale skin. It was familiar.

Quinn still smelled like fire and salt.

"I made you an apple pie, Rachel." Quinn's voice was raspy, and she felt like she was trying to speak through a rubber ball in her throat. Rachel loosened her hold slightly and looked up.

She met watery hazel eyes and realized Quinn was holding her with a pie in one hand and a red checkered blanket in the other.

"You-You…_Quinn_." Rachel was hopeless.

Quinn laughed abruptly, uncertainly. She gazed at Rachel for a moment.

Nobody had brown eyes like that. Those flushed, warm cheeks and bright red bow, and that wide, unstoppable smile that emerged when Rachel finally pulled herself together.

"I _missed_ you."

Quinn chuckled, and a few tears rolled down her cheeks, because maybe she was a little bit hopeless as well.

"I love you." Rachel said more quietly, surely, and she pressed her forehead against Quinn's chest and squeezed her again.

Quinn exhaled shakily. "You're a mess." She muttered fondly, stroking Rachel's hair.

Rachel whined against her chest.

"A beautiful, beautiful mess, sweetheart." Quinn whispered. She pushed Rachel back slightly and wiped the tears from Rachel's cheeks. "I love you too."

Rachel let out a noise, like a subdued shriek, because she'd waited two years to hear those words again. She put her hands on Quinn's face to make sure she was real. Quinn's lips twitched, amused, even though her eyes refused to leave Rachel's as well.

Quinn's hair was lighter and shaggy, but clean, and she had the elephant pinned onto the belt of her dress. Rachel traced her fingers along the scars on Quinn's cheek, and frowned she realized that her shoulder was bandaged again.

"For extra support." Quinn murmured, seeing Rachel start to fret. "At least I still _have_ the arm."

"Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Liar."

Quinn flushed to her ears. How did she find the person who could do this? "Nothing hurts right now." She said honestly.

Rachel smiled slightly. She lifted a hand and picked gently at the fraying edge of the bandage. "I did a better job than they did."

"Is that so?"

Rachel hummed. "I'm so glad you're here."

She felt out of breath, like she'd run down the street in the sun, and her eyes burned and she was _happy_. She pressed her lips together because she could see her neighbors watching them curiously.

Quinn lifted her chin in their direction and they disappeared back behind the curtains.

"You don't smell like ham anymore." Rachel said softly. She took Quinn's hand and stepped back towards the door.

Quinn's lips quirked. "I'm sure that's a good thing?"

Rachel chuckled, knocking into the wall because she refused to take her eyes off Quinn to see where she was going.

"I can't-I can't believe you're _here_." Rachel processed the information over and over, but it never stuck.

Quinn didn't seem to mind. She searched for somewhere to put her pie. "I got into Penn Station this morning."

"And you made a pie before coming here?" Rachel was enthralled.

"At Santana's." Quinn put the pie on the table by the mirror and met Rachel's gaze again. Rachel tried not to fly off the handle on some kind of tirade about Santana keeping secrets from her. She'd probably develop cardiac problems later in life because of all the waiting she'd been doing.

Quinn smiled softly and took Rachel's hands. She looked down at them for a minute, surprised, because Rachel's were rougher and darker than she'd remembered. They still fit perfectly.

"I want to take you on a picnic, Rachel." Quinn's voice was low. Her eyes were shining. "And I want to take you to the beach and fall asleep with you tonight."

Rachel nodded. Again and again.

Quinn settled a hand on Rachel's jaw, fingers just grazing her ear.

Rachel swallowed thickly. She answered Quinn's silent question. "Go ahead."

Quinn tilted her head and kissed her. Rachel hummed, whimpered, as their lips slid together. Quinn's felt exactly the same. Maybe they tasted like peppermint now instead of ham and beans.

"I sang every day for you." Rachel whispered.

Quinn's eyes sparkled. "Now you can sing _to_ me. All is clear, my dear."

_While sun showers are here_.

~ooooooooooooo~

"Do you remember telling me how you'd feel when you fell in love? When you found _the one_? You were twisting my arm around on the beach in Africa."

Quinn's voice was slow and rough with sleep, and Rachel smiled and curled closer into her side. She kept her eyes closed because the morning sun was blinding.

"Of course."

Quinn hummed softly, but said nothing else.

"Why?" Rachel pressed.

She rolled so that she was lying on top of Quinn, blankets tangled around their legs, and pressed her lips to her neck. And then blew a raspberry.

Quinn scoffed and squirmed away and tried not to laugh when Rachel kissed her cheeks. Her ears were tuned into the creaks of the bed. Cots were actually quieter than regular beds, and the ground was the quietest.

"Tell me why you asked?" Rachel urged. "What are you thinking?"

Quinn lifted an eyebrow and stayed quiet.

"Do _you_ remember what I said?"

Every bit of it. Quinn nodded.

Rachel considered this, realized that Quinn would talk when she wanted to talk, and put her head down on Quinn's chest to listen to her heart. It was the slowest she'd ever heard it. Steady and solid, and Rachel wondered if Quinn was even fully awake.

"I've found her. _That_ person." Quinn declared. She stared at the ceiling, lifting Rachel up and down with each breath.

Rachel smiled softly. "Have you?"

"I'm struck with this…" Quinn shook her head and sighed. She clicked her teeth together. "I want to purchase a piano for you, just to hear you play. Even though I can't…afford a piano, and I have no room for it."

Rachel chuckled.

"I want to paint a swing gold. I don't have a swing, and a gold-painted swing wouldn't be very pleasant, but I see your face and I think it might work." Quinn exhaled sharply like she was annoying herself. "I want to kiss you with wine on our lips, fall asleep in the sand, sing to Billie Holiday all night and dance around a dark room."

It was quiet for a moment, the only sounds coming from early morning traffic outside.

"I remembered all of it. And none of it makes sense."

"It's from a song, you know." Rachel informed, almost indignantly. She scooted up to see Quinn's eyes. "I didn't make it up."

Quinn's lips twitched. "Are you sure? It seems like something from your head."

"Because it's brilliant, right."

"Because it's beautiful, and relevant, and sort of nonsense, but it..." Quinn's cheeks turned pink. "It makes me far too happy."

"That's hardly possible."

Quinn bit her cheek.

"Smile, sweetheart." Rachel whispered.

It was too difficult a task not to. Quinn's jaw softened and Rachel played with the ends of her lightened blonde hair.

"Let's start. Let's fall asleep in the sand." Rachel suggested.

It was exactly what Quinn had been planning.

They gradually woke up, whispering and kissing and learning in the streaks of sunlight, and Quinn told Rachel that she'd make cubed ham for breakfast, and Rachel said she'd been baking hard canned bread for weeks, and they spent another ten minutes sitting on the rug in the hallway, laughing because of that.

Because they'd spent so much time _not laughing_.

Mercedes came banging on the door in the middle of breakfast, friends in tow. Santana helped Brittany examine all the shells she'd handed out on Christmas at Morocco, and Finn introduced them all to his new terrier puppy, Walter.

Named after a very special pig.

Sam met Rachel and swept her off her feet. Jesse told Quinn that she cleaned up well, and Quinn asked him what was growing on his face.

The beach in New York was comparatively quiet. Sounds of the city replaced artillery and the ground didn't rumble with approaching armor. The waves were always the same.

Rachel sat on the short wall separating the sand from the pavement and gestured at the water. "I don't know how it compares to California, but-"

"It's strange." Quinn stepped forward and dug her bare feet into the sand.

Her eyes grew brighter, and she stared down at her toes while Rachel observed curiously.

She'd already learned that Quinn was paranoid about noise, about her hearing and her ears. Maybe everything was muffled, maybe it was too loud. Quinn scowled when somebody spoke exceptionally loudly and refused to ask people to repeat what they'd said.

Rachel wasn't usually one to control her volume, but she reined it in.

Quinn pulled her out onto the sand, angling her face away from the stares of people who saw her scars and _knew_ she'd just come home. They smiled at her. A little boy waved.

"I hope strange is positive." Rachel dropped down into the sand and carefully patted down her dress.

"It feels nice." Quinn started to bury her own feet and Rachel smiled in amusement.

The waves were smaller than California and Morocco, but the whitewater still crashed and Quinn could smell the salt.

She turned to Rachel abruptly and met smiling brown eyes shining in the sun.

"I would marry you if I could, Rachel. I would take you home and introduce you to my family, because I'm going to make things better with them. I'd ask you today, _yesterday_, to be my wife."

Rachel exhaled softly. It turned into a sigh.

Quinn reached around for her bag and rummaged through it for a moment.

"I _can't_-I can't do that." Quinn muttered, and she emerged with a small silver ring, and Rachel's eyes widened, intrigued and breathless.

Quinn met her gaze again, frowning for a moment because she couldn't stop her hand from shaking. She focused on the waves in the background and Rachel's warm, watery, prematurely excited eyes.

"I can't ask you to be my wife," Quinn said slowly, "so I'm asking for forever instead…Forever with your _voice_, forever on a beach, forever in your arms-"

Rachel was in her arms before she finished speaking. Quinn couldn't understand what she was saying, but it was right in her ear and it sounded like "yes." There hadn't really been any doubt.

Quinn laughed and smiled widely and squeezed Rachel with both arms.

"I love you so much." Rachel's voice was clear now.

There was sand in Quinn's mouth, and she knew she was home.

~oooooooooo~

_Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. –Winston Churchill._


End file.
